Alternate Reality: Fairy Tales
by Celeste5502
Summary: An evil queen of a storybook land, wishing to take over the heroes' realm, zaps them inside of twisted versions of fairy tales which she believes are guaranteed to end tragically. Can they somehow manage to get a happily ever after after all? R&R please!
1. Prologue: Once Upon a Time

**Author's Note: Thank you to Green Phantom Queen for giving me an idea which immensely improved the story!**

Prologue: Once Upon a Time…

Over in Domino, a curious event was occurring in the high school's library. Nighttime had fallen over the city, so the room was devoid of the typical school day noises of gossiping whispers and scribbling pencils of students. The empty tables had some of their chairs pulled back as though the teens had just gotten up and left, with even a forgotten purse slung over one of their backs. Rows and row of stuffed bookshelves were awaiting the time when they'd be needed for some sort of project, or when someone just plain got bored and decided to browse through them.

Over on one shelf, however, a particular dust-covered book with a leather cover and the words _Fairy Tales_ written in flowing gold letters on its spine appeared to have lost its patience. The book's outline was emitting an ethereal violet light and shaking violently, as though something inside was trying to break its way out.

Little by little, the book's shaking forced it near the edge of the shelf, shoving the novels on either side of it away. Finally, when it managed to get just enough room, it toppled down to the floor with a thud, the leather cover facing the floor.

The shaking, violet-aura book had fallen open to a particular page featuring a painting of a young woman, marked with the caption _The Queen_. While the Queen had strikingly beautiful looks, including blonde hair that cascaded down her back and smooth, cream-colored skin, and she was clad in fine clothing consisting of a black corseted gown with a violet panel running down its center and a black diamond tiara perched on her head, her black eyes revealed something cruel and sinister underneath her exquisite exterior.

The book's glow slowly faded away, its quivering ceasing along with the violet aura's disappearance. For just a few moments, the library returned to its normal, silent state in the nighttime.

Then, the entirety of the book became engulfed in a blinding violet glow. An ethereal wind swirled up out of the light and headed straight towards the ceiling, forming a miniature twister right in the midst of the shelves.

From out of the book, right in the center of the tornado, a woman slowly started to emerge as though she was being raised on a platform; first came her gold locks of hair whipping around her face, capped with the sparkling black diamond tiara on top, then the top of her dress with its black sleeves flowing back in the wind, and finally the black and violet skirt which went all the way down to the tips of her toes.

Once the entirety of the woman had emerged, standing atop the book on the page with her painting, the violet light at her feet faded away and the swirling wind died in an instant.

The Queen remained where she was for a few minutes. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was deep and heavy, taking in the scents and sounds of freedom. Apparently the sound of liberty was nonexistent, but the smell was similar to that of musty books and just a faint scent of flowery perfumes.

"Ah, free at last…" she sighed blissfully.

The Queen slowly opened her eyes and looked at her surroundings, the round, dark pools of her pupils flashing with disapproval. "Humph! After fighting for so long to get out of that accursed book, I come to this place? It's certainly not befitting for royalty like me…" A nasty little smile spread across her face. "But it's nothing that a little bit of magic won't be able to fix…"

Her thoughts strayed towards a conjured image of an eerie, grey-stoned castle, with tapestries woven out of violet and midnight blue threads, gleaming silver chandeliers, perhaps a nice torture chamber in the basement…

She shook her head. "Now, now, I can't get ahead of myself. First things first…"

The Queen stepped off of the _Fairy Tales_ book and picked it up delicately, fearing that one touch would make the old novel fall to pieces. With a lick of her finger, she began slowly flipping through the yellowed, dog-eared pages, passing impatiently through various stories with gorgeous illustrations to accompany them. "Come on, now, where are you…?" she muttered to herself.

Finally, right when she was about to turn another page, she froze with her fingertips clutching its corner. A look of triumph spread across her face, and she removed her grip on the corner to gently stroke her hand across the page. "Ah, there you are," she purred.

She was gazing at a page decorated with a painting of a mirror attached to a grey-stoned wall. The oval mirror was inside of an ornate gold frame embedded with red rubies and black diamonds of all sizes. Reflected in the shining glass was a green, rather ghostly face with only black holes for eyes and two little slits for a nose, entirely surrounded by wispy green mist.

The Queen pointed one finger at the page. "You get out of there now; I need to ask you a question."

A tiny violet spark emerged from her finger and struck the page directly on the green, ghastly face in the mirror.

The book became enveloped in the eerie violet glow once more; this time, however, out of the light came the beautifully decorated mirror, obviously enchanted in some way since it reflected the disembodied face from the painting rather than The Queen's own.

When the mirror had been able to fully emerge from the book, the queen slammed it shut with a bang. The violet glow faded almost instantly.

The mystic mirror remained, hovering in the air before The Queen. She cleared her throat and, slowly and dramatically, chanted into the mirror:

_Mirror, mirror, hovering there,_

_If I tried to take over, how would I fare?_

The ghastly face stared at her with its empty sockets for a few seconds. It opened its void of a mouth and replied:

_While your power, your highness, is awesome and could threaten,_

_Your rule would never happen, thanks to heroes seven._

The face dissipated into thin green wisps of mist. Seven separate images slowly appeared in the mirror, revealing six different teenagers and one elderly man in their beds, gratefully sleeping the night away.

The Queen frowned at their sight. "My chances to reign are slim to none because of _them_?" She stared in particular at the blonde young man rolling around under his sheets and apparently speaking his dreams aloud ("Hand over dat pizza, man, it's mine!").

She folded her arms in disbelief. "Humph! Well, we'll see about that…"


	2. Chapter One: Enter Grimm's Realm

Chapter One: Enter Grimm's Realm

Téa Gardner was rudely snapped out of her slumber by the sound of the incredibly annoying buzz of her alarm clock. From under the sheets, her muffled voice groaned, "No, not now…"

Her eyes slowly opened, still very much dull and dazed from slumber. She glanced towards her bedroom window. Maybe she didn't have to get up yet; perhaps her clock was running ahead and she was free to go back to sleep.

But no, the sky outside was a bright blue, dotted with puffy white clouds, and the golden sun was shining so brightly that it hurt her eyes to look at it.

Téa angrily turned onto her side towards her nightstand and glared at the clock, still emitting that annoying buzz. With a frustrated little growl, she slammed her hand down on top of it.

The persistent hum almost immediately died away, as though it was frightened into silence by her hard slap.

Téa rolled onto her stomach and buried her face into her pillow. Normally she wasn't this opposed to getting out of bed for school, but today was most definitely an exception. She'd been having the most wonderful dream...she smiled happily as faint memories of it slowly came back to her…

* * *

_She was standing on the marble balcony of a beautiful white castle which practically glowed underneath the light of the full moon and the thousands of twinkling stars. Her beautiful garb consisted of a flowing pink and white gown decorated with glittering pearls and pink rubies. _

_She had been leaning on the balcony railing in solitude, gazing down at the never-ending grassy field dotted with occasional patches of thick trees below, when a gentle hand had tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and found a very familiar young man standing behind her, wearing an elegant blue coat with gold buttons and a wide grin on his face. Clutched in his hands was a silken pink rose on a thick green stem, all of the thorns having been plucked out so that it was truly perfect._

_The young man held the rose out to her. He glanced down at his feet rather shyly and murmured, "Forgive me…I did try my hardest to find a lovely one for you, but I'm not certain there's any flower in the world which could come close to being as beautiful as you are."_

_Téa smiled at his compliment; it was a bit corny, true, but very sweet. She delicately plucked the rose from his fingers and placed it up into her hair. The rose's color matched perfectly with her gown. "That's all right, thank you; I appreciate the effort."_

_He quickly looked back up. From the way he trembled she could tell he was having a hard time containing the sheer excitement he felt. "You're quite welcome," he replied as calmly as he could. _

_He reached out and took her hand in his; his soft, warm touch sent a tingle through Téa's body. "May I?"_

"_You may," Téa smiled. She, too, now had to try and stop her hand from shaking with delight._

_Since she was taller than him, he had to stand up on his very tiptoes in order to be face-to-face with her. She closed her eyes, excitement building up inside her like a bubbling fountain, and…_

* * *

That had been the point at which the alarm clock's buzz had cut through her slumber. Perfect timing, of course.

Téa let out another groan as she turned onto her back. She placed her hands behind her head and stared up at her blue ceiling, deep in thought.

She'd been counting how many times these dreams had come to her, and exactly what kind of dreams they had been. The most recent one had been number twenty-six, but it wasn't nearly as romantic as the dreams of the past-especially since they'd been unfortunately interrupted before they could kiss.

Téa heaved a heavy, depressed sigh. _I really wish that they weren't just dreams…_

She remained in her warm bed for just a few more minutes, thinking about…him. It wasn't until her mother finally rapped on the door that she awoke fully and got up to put her school uniform on.

As she tightened her blue bow around her neck, her gaze turned towards her dresser. Atop it, alongside a few stuffed animals, was a frame holding two separate pictures of the young men in her dreams, although technically, since they shared the same body, they were one and the same.

Téa walked over to the dresser and picked the photos up in her hand. She gently ran her fingers over the glass separating her from the pictures, wishing deeply that she could reach inside, go beyond the simple picture, and actually run her fingers through their true tri-colored locks.

"Guys…" she addressed the photographs as though they were the real things, "I do like being your friend, don't get me wrong…but sometimes…" She hugged the photos tightly to her chest. "I wish I was something more…"

* * *

Unbeknownst to Téa, her every move from the time she'd awoken was being watched with great scrutiny. The Queen was observing her with great care through the all-seeing power of the magic mirror; after all, if she was going to get rid of these heroes, then she had to do so properly. Every one of those children had to have some sort of weakness, and if she could find out what it was, then ensuring that they'd never obtain a happily ever after would be a simple task.

When Téa placed the pictures back onto her bookshelf, The Queen leaned up closer towards the mirror and squinted in order to obtain a better look at them. She could just make out that the photographs were of two young men, so similar looking that they could have been brothers.

It was the photo of the more youthful of the two, however, which made The Queen's eyes widen with glee. There was no mistaking that he was one of the heroes she'd seen in the mirror; how could anyone forget his young, innocent face and his pointy, tri-colored hair?

"Ooh, this is perfect!" she laughed to herself. "He can become a part of her story as well! I'll be able to kill two birds with one stone!"

She quickly took the book _Fairy Tales,_ which she was clutching firmly in her hands, and balanced it on her knee. She licked her finger and began quickly flipping through it once more. Her eyes only scanned over the titles of the various tales; they became more and more narrowed as story after story was eliminated. "Not The Pied Piper…no, The Boy Who Learned What Fear Is doesn't seem correct either…argh, not Puss in Boots…oh!"

The Queen took the _Fairy Tales_ book in both hands and held it up closer to her face. On the right side of it was a painting of a beautiful young woman and a hideous creature standing in the midst of a garden in full bloom. The creature was holding a bright red rose out to the girl, whose face registered quite a bit of shock, assumedly from both his shocking appearance and his surprisingly kind gesture.

"Wonderful," she smiled. "The two of them can most certainly go into that story. Unlike the original version, however, I'll make it highly doubtful that even that young woman will be able to see through his appearance for who he is…"

* * *

Téa was at the doorway of her house, sliding her flat brown shoes onto her feet. She let out a small grunt as her little yellow backpack heavily weighted down upon her while she bent over. "Maybe I should consider getting one of those backpacks on wheels…" she murmured to herself.

She stood up straight with another grunt. "Agh…" She winced her eyes shut and pressed her hands up against her lower back. "I don't think 'consider' is the right word…"

Téa slowly took one hand off of her back and used it to reach out and open the front door. Her eyes remained squeezed shut from the pain as she stepped outside.

The change happened in a passing moment, only marked by the instant blast of cold wind all around her. It took Téa a few seconds to realize that the heavy load had been lifted off of her back. Though at first she sighed with relief from her liberation, her feeling quickly changed to one of terror.

She snapped her eyes open to find herself in a place which was certainly nowhere near Domino. The sky above her, so blue and almost completely clear before, was now covered with black, rolling clouds that threatened to rain at any instant. Before her stretched a seemingly endless forest of grey, barren trees whose branches waved like threatening claws in the chilly wind.

Téa wrapped her arms tightly around her body, shivering from the coldness that fiercely whipped around her. _It's so cold out here…I should have worn my jacket…_

She blinked. _Wait a minute, I did!_

Téa glanced down at herself. Her school uniform and backpack were gone, replaced with a yellow tube top, a flowing pink skirt that went all the way down to her ankles with a bright blue ribbon tied into a bow around the top, and dainty pink flats on her feet.

She quickly turned around to go back inside her house, only to see that it had disappeared. Behind her was only more of the dark, dreary landscape, with no clear end in sight.

"What's going on?" she called out into the dark woods. "Where am I…?"

* * *

Yugi hurriedly dashed down the stairs, sliding his arms through the straps of his tan backpack at the same time. His alarm clock hadn't gone off that morning, so he'd woken up a half hour later than usual. Thankfully a few sparks of magic were able to bathe, clothe, and feed him in just a few minute's time. All that he needed to do now was run the entire way to school, and his constant dashing in the midst of battling psychopathic nuts had wonderfully prepared him for that.

He pushed his way out the door leading into the Game Shop, barely avoiding hitting Grandpa while he was leaning down behind the counter to scrub it clean. Yugi leapt over the shop counter with a flying jump and called out a hurried goodbye over his shoulder before he pushed open the shop door and ran outside.

The sight that greeted him made him stop cold in his rush. Instead of the familiar streets of Domino, he'd run into a cold, dark forest filled with trees whose only covering consisted of grey bark. The ground beneath him with hardened and grey, and as he'd run forward, his feet had kicked up a tiny cloud of swirling dust.

"Wha-" Yugi turned around to go back into the Game Shop and ask Grandpa if he saw the same sight, but it, too, had vanished. All that lay behind him was more of the bleak woods, the grey trees stretching off into the horizon.

In his mind's eye, Yugi saw the Pharaoh also staring around the cold and dark forest in surprise. _Yugi, what is this place? _

_I…don't know…_

Suddenly, a cackling voice spoke from behind them: "Hello there."

In the instant that Yugi spun around, the Pharaoh took over their body. His narrowed eyes fell upon a beautiful young woman clad in elegant violet and black garb, who in turn gave him a sickly sweet smile. From the crown on her head, he deduced that she must have been of royalty, though from the cruel look in her dark eyes he could tell some blackness was mixed with her blue blood.

"Who are you?" he snapped at her.

"I am The Queen," she replied in a deep, dramatic voice. "I have been the ruler of the land of fairy tales for five years, but I've become tired of just reigning over one single world. Now I'd like to expand the boundaries of my kingdom, and I plan on beginning with your place."

She raised one hand into the air and pointed out one finger. Violet sparks started shooting out of its tip with fervor. "First, however, I have to ensure that there won't be anybody else around to stop me."

The Queen brought her glittering finger down. The little sparks became violet blurs of light as they soared with incredible speed towards him; they hit his chest before he could even rise up his own hand in retaliation.

Pharaoh dropped down to all fours as a soft, violet aura surrounded him. A terrible, wrenching pain ripped through the entirety of his body. He let out an unearthly roar as he felt his bones and muscles begin to snap and twist with loud, sickening grinding noises into some new, bizarre form; when he looked down at his hands, he saw thick, brown fur beginning to burst out of the cracks in his skin.

"Which means, little boy," the woman sneered, "you and your little friends have to go."

* * *

Téa looked around the forest wildly, shivering from both the miserable chill in the air and the fear of not knowing where the heck she was. _Now what am I going to do..._she thought to herself_. The forest doesn't look the least bit inviting, but just standing here isn't going to help me get home…_

She was suddenly snapped out of her consideration by something dropping down from the sky and landing with a thud at her feet. She glanced down at the ground and saw in the midst of the tiny cloud of dust that had formed a gold, ornate box shaped into the sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh.

Téa gasped from shocking recognition. The beautiful box had been where Yugi held his Millennium Puzzle when it had still been in pieces. She'd seen it so many times when she'd been in Yugi's room that she knew of almost every last one of its elegant carvings and designs.

She knelt down onto the ground and lifted the lid off of the box. Once again, a horrified cry leapt from her throat.

Inside of the box lay the Millennium Puzzle itself, broken back up into its dozens of little gold pieces which still shone brightly despite the lack of light in the woods.

Téa slowly reached inside and pulled out one particular piece. It was a rather large one with an Eye of Osiris protruding from the center that seemed to gaze back at her wide, terrified eyes.

"Yugi…" Tears began to form at the corners of her cerulean pupils. "What happened to you…?"


	3. Chapter Two: Sweet and Sour

Chapter Two: Sweet and Sour

Joey Wheeler groaned as he slowly aroused himself from sleeping. His eyes fluttered open and glanced down his bed. He saw, once again, for some bizarre reason beyond his comprehension, he'd been tightly wrapped up in his bed sheets like a mummy, arms pinned tightly to his sides and legs immovably bound together.

Joey groaned as he rolled onto his side and squirmed to pull one arm out from the iron-like grip of his blanket. He reached out and turned the alarm clock on his nightstand towards him.

His eyes almost bulged out of his head when he saw what time it was. "What de-aw, man!" he cried out.

He turned onto his back and winced his eyes shut, focusing all of his energy onto his shape-shifting powers. He could feel the flesh and blood of his body shift into a completely smooth and hard substance, the strongest in the entirety of the universe.

Joey grunted as he flexed his arms and spread out his legs. The blanket around him snapped at its seams and fluttered down the sides of his bed, revealing a body made entirely out of brightly gleaming diamond.

He shifted himself back to normal before he leapt down from the bed. His feet landed on something rather soft and squishy which let out an 'oomph' in protest.

It was only then that he remembered Tristan had spent the night at his place.

Joey slowly looked down to see his buddy lying on a zapped-up sleeping bag on the floor, groaning in pain from the force of his feet landing directly on his stomach.

"Sorry, bro," Joey said sheepishly as he stepped off of Tristan and onto the floor, "but we're kinda gonna be late if we don't get our butts movin'."

"Moving for what?" Tristan groaned as he sat up, still half asleep from his quick and rude awakening.

"Uh, for school?" Joey replied, snapping his fingers with a tiny burst of green sparks. His PJs subsequently transformed into his school uniform, complete with his backpack slung over his shoulder.

Tristan snapped out of his slight daze. "Say what?!"

He threw the top of the sleeping bag off and jumped up from the floor while Joey dashed out of his bedroom. With his own snap of his fingers, orange sparks came forth which transformed his own PJs into his blue jacket with white T-shirt and blue pants.

Joey, meanwhile, ran down the hall of his apartment, backpack flying out from behind him. He turned into the kitchen doorway and slid on the linoleum tiled floor towards the wooden drawers and cabinets.

Tristan entered a few moments later, guided down the hall by the sound of banging noises. He watched as Joey rapidly moved down the lines of cabinets and drawers, peering inside each one for just a few moments before he angrily slammed them shut.

"Don't tell me you don't have anything around here to eat!" Tristan cried in disbelief.

Joey glared at him over his shoulder and snapped, "'Ey, _you're _de one who said dat we should have a feedin' frenzy last night!"

"Yeah, you're right," Tristan agreed sarcastically, "I should have known better than to suggest something like that, 'cause of course you'd take it as a go-ahead to stuff your face with everything in sight!"

"'Ey, _I'm _not de one who ate an entire pizza, a couple boxes a leftover Chinese, an six slices a cake last night!"

"No, but you _were _the one who ate three burgers, a whole bag of cookies, and a couple dozen or so rice balls!"

* * *

The Queen gagged in disgust as she watched the two fire retorts back and forth at one another through her mirror. "Where in the world does a partly-mortal stomach manage to even put all of that food?" she cried aloud in complete disbelief.

She shook her head to clear away the feeling of nausea in her throat. "Well, on the bright side, I know where to put the two gluttons without even looking through the book…"

* * *

"Thanks a lot, Joe; now we're gonna be going to school on an empty stomach!"

"Quit actin' like ya didn't take part in de feast, ya dolt!"

"You had way more than I did, jerk!"

The two continued bickering all the way over to the front door. Joey wrenched it open angrily and the two stepped outside, shoving into each other as they made their way through.

They were so involved in their argument that it took them a few seconds to realize they hadn't stepped into the hall of apartments which should have been outside Joey's door; only the sudden feeling of a gentle breeze made them finally snap out of their fighting and look at their surroundings.

The two were standing in the midst of a large, luscious forest. A gentle wind blew through the trees all around the two of them, the quiet whoosh accompanied by the tiny chirps of birds in the distance. Little rays of sunlight just barely shone through the cracks in between the green leaves, filling the forest with occasional bursts of light.

"Uhhh…where de heck are we?" Joey finally spoke when he'd regained his voice from the shock that had overcome him.

"How am I supposed to know?" Tristan asked.

Very slowly, the two started to pick their way through the woods, twigs snapping underneath their feet as they walked.

"Now we're definitely gonna be late for school," Joey muttered angrily.

"Hey, for all we know, time back in our place is frozen," Tristan replied. "Or I hope it is, anyway…if we get one more tardy for the semester our teacher's gonna throw a fit…"

"Tristan?" Joey had stopped dead in the middle of the forest, staring in complete shock and awe at the sight that met his eyes.

"Then again, maybe we could zap the clock back…" Tristan paused and stroked his chin in thought. "We'd have to make sure that nobody else is looking at it, though…you think the guys would be willing to distract everyone while we give ourselves five more minutes?"

"Tristan…"

"Téa would probably be against it, but we might be able to convince Yugi and Bakura to-"

"TRISTAN, YA NUMBSKULL, GET OVER HERE AN LOOK AT DIS!" Joey cried, pointing out ahead of the two of them.

The insult made Tristan snap out of his thoughts. He angrily stepped towards Joey, but when his eyes fell onto what his friend saw, he too had to stop and stare.

Sitting in a clearing right in the middle of the woods was a small house made entirely out of desserts. Gingerbread held together with white frosting made up the four walls, roof, and smoking chimney while a giant bar of chocolate with a little rock candy sticking out of one side served as the front door and doorknob. Glittering gumdrops, striped candy canes, twisted strands of licorice and swirling peppermints decorated the home while giant lollipops stuck out of the ground all around it like bizarre, multicolored flowers.

Little streams of drool started to trickle down the corners of the two's mouths. "Tristan…" Joey spoke in a garbled voice, "I tink we just died an went ta heaven…"

The two dashed into the clearing and straight up towards the house. Joey reached down, plucked one of the lollipops out of the ground, and started licking it with fervor while Tristan got onto his tiptoes and took a huge bite out of the edge of the roof. Both of them grunted and smacked their lips in delight as the sweet and slightly spicy tastes of the candies touched their tongues and filled their mouths with savory flavors. The thought that perhaps somebody actually lived in the place never crossed their minds once as they ate their fill of delicious goodies.

Somebody, however, had been watching them through a crystal clear rock candy window. A sickly sweet smile crossed their face as they watched the boys snarf down more and more pieces of their hovel of comestibles.

"That's right, boys, eat as much as you want," they whispered aloud with glee. "I highly prefer to have my children stuffed and meaty…"

* * *

Seto Kaiba angrily slid his arms through the holes in his sleeveless white trenchcoat, attempting to restrain himself from accidentally tearing it in some way. He snarled to himself out loud, "How could both the batteries in my alarm clock _and_ Mokuba's run out of power in the middle of the night on us? Now it's going to be impossible for Mokuba to get to school on time…The maid is certainly getting a dock in her paycheck this week for this error…she should be grateful that I'm going to work instead…"

He walked over to his front desk and knelt down to pick up the silver briefcase lying beside it. When he stood up straight once more, he took a glance out his bedroom window. Mokuba was leaning up against the iron-barred front gate, his eyes glued to the front doors as he waited for his brother to step through them. His stuffed green backpack lay by his feet, evidently too heavy to stay on his back for such a long time. The black limousine had pulled up the curb before the gate and now sat there, awaiting its future passengers.

Kaiba placed his silver briefcase down by his side again. With his two free hands, he yanked the window up and open.

He leaned his head out and called down to his brother, "Mokuba!"

Mokuba glanced up in the direction of his brother's voice. "Yes?"

"I'll be down there soon; get in the limo and tell the driver to wait another few minutes," Kaiba snapped at him.

"Okay." Mokuba replied, seemingly oblivious to the sour tone in his older brother's voice.

* * *

"Hmm, let's see…" The Queen tapped one finger against her chin in thought as she watched Kaiba take his silver briefcase in hand again. "I can certainly think of plenty of brother and sister combinations in a fairy tale, but two brothers…blast, I've got nearly nothing…"

She continued staring intently into the mirror as Kaiba walked out his bedroom door and down the hall towards the grand staircase. As she took in the interesting appearance of the dark-haired young man in the rather large white jacket carrying a briefcase instead of a backpack, an idea slowly began to form in her mind. "Hmm! Perhaps that would work, in a way…granted, the original story was about a girl and her grandmother…" The Queen shrugged her shoulders. "But I suppose I'll just have to work with what I have."

* * *

Mokuba grunted a little as he shoved one of the two heavy iron gates open with all his might. Once a large enough crack had formed between them, he slowly squeezed his way through the opening; thankfully, his large and heavy backpack was helpful for once as it pushed the gate open a little bit more. When he'd gotten through, he pressed his back up against the gate, shoving it closed with far more ease.

Mokuba stepped up to the limo and pulled the back door open. He slid his backpack off of his shoulders and, clutching it firmly by its straps, flung it through the door.

He closed his eyes and heaved a sigh of relief from the loss of the load on his back. Happily, he slipped through the limo doorway-

-and fell flat on his bottom onto hard earth.

"Ow!" Mokuba snapped his eyes open upon impact. To his utter surprise, instead of the black, plush limo interior, he was greeted by the sight of a huge forest of cherry blossom trees. The trees were in the rare sight of full bloom, their flowers filling the forest with a spectacular pink and white display. When a gentle breeze blew by, some of the loose petals were plucked off and went flying through the air atop the little gust of wind.

Mokuba brought himself to his feet, never once lowering his gaze away from the beautiful woods. "Where…am I…?" he asked aloud.

The answer that came was neither helpful nor welcome. It was the sound of a low, throaty growl, coming from right behind him.

Mokuba's eyes opened wide with fear at the noise. Very, very slowly, he turned around to face its source.

His eyes linked up directly with a pair of glowing yellow ones. Specifically, the eyes belonged to a large wolf who glared at Mokuba from between the cherry blossom trees. The wolf snarled at him once more, revealing sharp teeth that gleamed brightly against its shaggy grey fur.

To Mokuba's horror, the wolf's back was arched in preparation for an attack. He slowly took a few steps back from the terrible beast, but it wasn't about to let its newfound snack get away that easily.

With a roar, the wolf took a flying leap into the air. Mokuba froze at the sight and sound, remaining right where he stood as the beast headed towards his face, opening its jaws as widely as it could…

* * *

Kaiba had just made it to the bottom of the stairs when the faint sound of a scream reached his ears. He looked up in shock when he recognized who the scream belonged to.

"Mokuba..." he whispered.

Kaiba dashed all the way down the entrance hall and shoved one of the oak doors open with his shoulder. He took just a few hurried steps outside before realizing that he'd stepped right into an unfamiliar forest of blooming pink and white cherry blossom trees; the white stairs, perfectly manicured lawn, and wrought iron gates had vanished in entirety.

"What the-" He looked around the forest with wide eyes, blinking quite a bit to make sure that he truly saw what he thought he was seeing.

"Seto!"

Kaiba looked in the voice's direction and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw Mokuba, safe and sound, come towards him from the midst of the trees. "There you are!" he called out. "Why were you screaming just a few seconds ago?"

Mokuba blinked. "Um…I…I…" He stuttered for a few moments as though he needed to seriously consider the question. "I was a little bit freaked out because…because I suddenly found myself standing here…where are we, Seto?"

"I'm not sure myself…" Kaiba murmured in reply. He let out a small sigh of anger and exasperation. "It has something to do with the geek squad, though; that I'm quite certain about...what psychopathic head case is planning on destroying us now?"

"I don't think there can be anything dangerous in this place," Mokuba looked back at the endless stretch of pink-and-white-flowered trees. "It's too beautiful to have something evil in it. The only thing here which potentially looks evil is you."

"_What?!" _

"No offense," he quickly added. He pointed at Kaiba's trenchcoat and said, "It's just the red and black clothing, that's all."

Kaiba looked down at himself and did a double-take when he saw that his sleeveless white trenchcoat had been dyed in a passing moment to a fierce shade of blood-red. "What the-"

"See what I mean?" Mokuba said matter-of-factly.

Kaiba looked up at his brother, eyes flashing with anger. "So apparently this freak thinks it will be funny to attempt to mess with our heads." He stepped to Mokuba's side and glared angrily into the depths of the forest. "C'mon, Mokuba, let's go find them and show them exactly why nobody should ever dare to do that to us."

"Right!" Mokuba nodded.

As the two approached the pink and white forest, Kaiba protectively reached out and put one arm around his brother's shoulder. Mokuba glanced down at his hand as it touched him with a bit of shock and disgust in his eyes, then up at Kaiba's face. His eyes were narrowed into an absolutely livid glare, and his face had turned as crimson as his trenchcoat with fury.

_Wow, he's really angry…_

Mokuba's dark eyes flashed for a quick moment with a gold-yellow color, and a small, sinister smile spread across his face. _That's all right, though…_ He licked his lips hungrily. _I like it when my food's a little warm…even when it is with madness…_


	4. Chapter Three: Glimpses of Grey

Chapter Three: Glimpses of Grey

Bakura snuck a glance down at his watch. He silently groaned to himself when he saw exactly what time it was; only ten minutes left until the bell rang for classes, and yet here he was, still standing only a few inches away from his apartment door.

It wasn't entirely his fault. Everything had been going smoothly that morning. His alarm clock went off with perfect timing, he'd actually remembered to wash his school uniform last night, and he'd managed to get through breakfast with relative briskness. The only thing that he had left to do was actually walk out the door and down the road to Domino High.

At the moment he'd placed his hand onto the doorknob, however, he caught a glimpse of something moving along the floor out of the corner of his eye. He'd whipped around, hand out and sparking with grey magic, and watched as a very dull, grey outline of an indistinguishable human peeled itself off the hall floor and flew up into the air.

Bakura slowly lowered his arms as the mere silhouette materialized for itself far more specific features of a pale young woman clad in colonial dress. Yet another ghost had come to ask him for some guidance.

Bakura had opened his mouth to tell her that he didn't have time to assist any spirits at the moment, but when he'd seen the tiny silver tears streaming down her face, he'd just left his mouth hanging open. How could he deny a young woman who'd probably been wandering the earth for centuries the right to have someone hear about the pain from her life?

Now he half-wished he'd actually had the heart to do so. He'd expected that her story would take awhile (she had an entire lifetime worth of a tale to tell, after all), but he couldn't have ever guessed that anyone could possibly go through eight different husbands over the course of their life, every last one of which dying a sudden, horrific death.

Right when she was about to go into more detail about the death of husband number eight, he'd quickly held up one hand to stop her. "Please, miss, there's no more that you have to say," he insisted. "Already I clearly understand your reason for remaining bound to the earthly plane of existence."

The woman's dark eyes opened wide with shock. "You do?"

Bakura nodded. "You're stuck in this place precisely because it's where your mind is stuck as well. If you wish to move on, first you have to ensure that you've firmly cut your ties to your brutal past, and that means finally making peace with the consecutive deaths of all eight of your husbands. Once you've done that, going to the afterlife should become a fairly easy task."

"Oh!" The woman glanced down at the ground, her cheeks turning to a dull grey color with a blush of embarrassment. "I suppose that makes sense…I can't very well get away from here if I'm choosing to remain in my mind, can I?"

Bakura smiled wanly and shook his head. "No, not really."

"Well, thank you very much for listening." The woman gave him a polite curtsy. "I do hope to see you much later in the future; perhaps once I've moved on I'll be able to send you some sort of token of appreciation…"

* * *

The Queen stared into the mirror with wide eyes as she watched the ghost before the hero begin to fade away, having been satisfied with finding means to move on. "He can honestly speak with the dead?" she finally gasped out in shock.

Only after a few more moments of staring did the task at hand finally come back to The Queen's mind. She diverted her attention back down to _Fairy Tales_ book and started flipping once more through the pages, scanning over each title that came into her view. "Let's see, let's see…I can't directly remember any fairy tales featuring ghosts…plenty of witches, trolls, and pesky little princesses, but…aha!"

She stopped at a painting spread across two consecutive pages of the book, grinning with delight. The picture featured two men riding through a forest in the prime of the autumn season on a moonlit night. While the one man was rather lanky and hunched up on the back of his galloping horse like a grasshopper, the other was dressed entirely in black and his horse had reared upwards with a crazed look in its eye.

What immediately caught The Queen's attention, however, was the large orange pumpkin perched atop the black-clad rider's neck, serving as an extremely poor substitute for a head.

The Queen let out a nasty cackle. "Perfect! Not even a full-fledged medium should be able to tame the headless horseman…"

* * *

Bakura stared at the empty space where the ghost had stood for just a few moments after she'd left, a small smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. Perhaps the vast majority of the ghosts he encountered were depressed souls who poured out the most sorrowful of stories, but their bouts of sadness were sufficiently made up for by the lift in their spirits once they finally found the way to break free and move on.

He absentmindedly glanced down at his watch again, recalling that he did have school to go to still. Eight minutes until class started; he could just barely make it if he ran.

He turned around and, after an exasperating amount of time with a spirit, finally pulled his apartment door open.

A blast of chilly wind struck him directly in the face. He let out a cry of shock as the coldness stung his eyes and winced them tightly shut, holding his hands out in front of his face for extra protection.

_What in the world…? _

He slowly reached out one hand and felt around blindly in front of him until the frame of the doorway came into his grasp. Using it as a grip to help him move against the wind's push, he slowly stepped outside of the apartment.

Once he'd gotten through, the rush of air thankfully died down to a gentle breeze. Bakura cautiously opened his eyes, still wary of yet another unexpected blow.

The sight which greeted him made him wonder if his vision had been affected by the arctic air. Instead of the long, green-carpeted hallway which was normally outside his front door, he saw a seemingly never-ending forest stretching out before him. The forest was in the peak of fall, for though a few leaves littered the browned ground of the woods, a gold and crimson array was still clutching onto the branches of the towering trees. From the midnight sky shone the light of the ethereal harvest moon, casting a warm glow around the cool area.

As Bakura rubbed his hand across his eyes to make sure they were seeing properly, another flash of grey went across his view. When he realized the grey, in fact, was directly on him, he glanced down at himself and saw that his school clothes had been replaced with colonial attire, complete with a flowing grey jacket fastened tightly around him with silver buttons.

Had his unexpected visitor somehow thrust him back in time? Bakura immediately dismissed that idea; what reason would she have for doing so if he'd helped her out sufficiently with her problem?

While he pondered the sudden switch in time, the faint sound of the steady gallop of horse's hooves drew him out of his thoughts. Bakura turned around and listened carefully as the harried clip-clop came nearer and nearer, accompanied by the occasional wild whinny.

When the animal finally appeared through the depths of the dark woods, Bakura could just barely make out its outline, the horse itself being as dark as the void around it. Its opal eyes were narrowed with rage, and when the stallion finally came into the moonlight, they gleamed with a wild fervor.

Atop the horse, Bakura could just barely make out some sort of huddled black mass with a stream of darkness flowing out behind it on the wind. The raven-black equine halted right in front of Bakura and reared up on its hind legs with such an enraged neigh that he couldn't help taking a few steps backwards.

When the horse came back down, Bakura could clearly see underneath the rays of glimmering light that the black mass was a human being with a large dark cloak wrapped around it. The only part of him or her which remained uncovered was the hands that gripped the reigns; they were thin, bony, and covered with skin so white that it almost shone under the moonlight.

The person threw their head back, sending the cloak's hood sliding down onto their back.

Bakura couldn't stifle his gasp of horror. Instead of a head, the man had a huge, orange gourd perched atop his neck. The pumpkin had an angry face carved into its shell, although it certainly couldn't have expressed in entirety the rage the rider must have felt with such a fragile excuse of a head.

The medium stared into the rider's triangular eyes for a few moments; although the only thing they held was black pits, he felt as though they were gazing straight at him with some mad desire to destroy him.

Bakura almost jumped out of his skin when he heard another whinny right behind him. Did this…person, whoever he or she was, honestly have a headless accomplice?

He turned around, heart pounding with pure panic. He heaved a quiet sigh of relief when he saw it wasn't yet another black-clad decapitated creep. Instead, a white stallion that practically glowed in the moonlight had appeared on the dirt path running through the woods, already saddled up and awaiting a rider.

Without a moment's hesitation, Bakura shot himself into the air and landed directly atop the horse's back. In one quick movement, he grabbed the reins and yanked back on them, sending the horse forward on the path with a burst of speed.

As the pale horse galloped down the path, the trees' leaves becoming mere red and gold blurs in Bakura's view, the medium stole a glance backwards and saw the headless horseperson had taken up the chase, its stallion crying out in pain as the rider forced it to exert itself beyond its possible bounds of energy. Though he knew it wasn't possible, Bakura swore that the pumpkin's mouth had curved upwards into a toothy grin, as though it got some sort of perverse pleasure in a chase for someone's life.

He quickly turned and focused all of his attention on the path stretching out before him. His pounding pulse beat directly in time with his horse's hooves as they rode deeper and deeper into the woods, waiting with bated breath for the time when the sound of the second set of hooves would finally fade…


	5. Chapter Four: Gold Fever

Chapter Four: Gold Fever

"Blast it," Solomon Muto muttered to himself. Ten minutes had past and even after all of that scrubbing with a damp cloth, the fingerprint still flat-out refused to come off of the glass display case. "Why must there always be that one stain which refuses to come out…?"

He pressed the cloth up against the glass once more and started rubbing at the annoying mark with more fervor. With all of his thoughts focused on getting the print out, he forgot in near entirety about how his incredible strength could break right through the glass if he pushed any harder on it.

Until it suddenly shattered under the force of his pressure, that is.

Grandpa stared in shock at the now glass-less display case, the little shards littering the shelves and games with slivers of glitter under the Game Shop's lights. He lifted his head towards the ceiling and angrily yelled out a steady stream of obscenities.

"Excuse me, but I don't ever recall teaching you _that_ kind of language when I was your father!"

Solomon whipped around in shock at the sudden interruption of his ranting. Pharaoh's near double, save for his burnt-orange skin, had appeared out of seemingly thin air right behind him. He was leaning against the display case right behind Solomon and giving the old man a stern glare.

"Please don't just sneak up on me like that! Once more and I might have a heart attack!" Solomon protested as he stood up. "And I'm older now, so I'll say what I like."

"Not right in front of your grandchild, I hope," Spencer cocked one eyebrow.

Grandpa rolled his eyes. "No, of course not, Dad."

Spencer laughed. "Ah, just like the old days." He stood up straight and ordered Solomon, "Now move away from there and allow me to work my magic on it, _por favor_."

Solomon stepped to the side as Spencer walked forward and held one hand up towards the display case. A golden aura of magic slowly appeared around him; as he closed his eyes to focus, the slivers of glass, too, became engulfed in a gold glow and rose up from the shelves, fitting themselves back together in their frames piece by piece like a jigsaw puzzle solving itself.

When the gold glow faded away, the tiny shards had become whole sheets of glass once more, so smooth and pristine that not even a crack remained of its shattered state.

Spencer opened his eyes and grinned. "_Perfección_," he nodded. He looked around the Game Shop. "Now, um, can you please tell me exactly where Yugi and the others went?"

"They should be at the school by now; I just saw Yugi run off there this morning," Solomon replied as he went back to washing the glass case (with a much more gentle touch, of course.)

"That's…what you think? That they're just…at school?"

Solomon paused with his work. He could clearly hear an undertone of fear in Spencer's words. "Spencer, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Grandpa sighed; Spencer had replied way too quickly for that to be the truth. He stood up and turned to look the king straight in the eye. "Spencer, please-if something has happened to my grandson and his friends, then I would like to be aware of it, if you don't mind," he insisted. "It's not as though I'm completely defenseless against the forces of evil, you know."

"True…" After a few moments more of hesitation, Spencer took in a deep breath. "The Three made contact with me a little while ago. They told me that they'd been looking over your dimension, to see how things were going and all, and…they found that something rather…strange had happened to your grandson and his friends."

"Would you care to be a bit more specific?" Grandpa folded his arms. "Or do you still think I'm a delicate child who can't handle such things?"

"Agh, sorry…the parent mentality can sometimes have a hard time going away, ya know?" Spencer grinned sheepishly for a moment before putting a serious look on his face. "The Three told me that while they'd been watching over them on the monitor, all of them suddenly…vanished."

"Vanished?" Solomon blinked in confusion. "What in tarnation do you mean by 'vanished'?"

"Just what it sounds like I mean!" Spencer cried. "One second they were there on the monitors, going through doorways to get to school, and the next they were gone. The Three scanned for them throughout their world, just to be certain they weren't seeing things, and there wasn't a trace of them to be found. They just dropped off the face of this earth!"

"But…perhaps they simply went through a portal of some kind?"

Spencer narrowed his eyes. "Portal activity was the first thing they checked for. They found that in the last hour, five of them had been created and, surprise, surprise, they had been placed in the exact same doorways your grandson and his friends had walked through right before they disappeared."

"Where exactly did they go?"

"From what they were able to detect, apparently they were sent to a realm where people can become characters in classic fairy tale stories, unable to return to their normal selves until they've obtained the typical happy ending. It's most common name is Grimm's Realm."

"Hmm…" Solomon stroked his beard in thought. "Well, a fairy tale realm is better than, say, a demonic one, isn't it?"

"It would be, if it weren't for one thing: Only fairy tale beings can open up the door to the realm, and in order to do so, they have to have the magical powers necessary for creating one, of course. We were desperately hoping that perhaps the being that opened up the portals was of the more benign kind, such as the fairy godmother or the wizard, but that turned out to be far from the case."

Grandpa eyes' widened with fear. "What exactly was the case, then?"

"They had been opened up with the powers of a queen. And in the vast majority of the fairy tales in existence, the queens who possess magical powers are as evil as one can get…"

* * *

The Queen hissed with irritation at the image in her magic mirror. "Well, young man, congratulations," she snarled. "You've discovered my plot. For that, I shall give you an extra special role in Grimm's Realm…"

* * *

"Do you know what exactly this queen would plan on doing to them?" Grandpa asked hesitantly.

Spencer shrugged. "Turn them into toads or mice, force them to become her servants-who knows? The only thing that's certain is that we have to find Yugi and the others as quickly as possible."

"Right."

Grandpa slapped his damp rag down atop the glass display case. With his newly freed hand, he reached into his overalls pocket and pulled out the tiny charm of a Dark Magician Girl staff by the chain it was strung on.

He pressed it up against his chest. The chain's two ends lit up with the glow of a soft, pale blue light as they curled up like two slithering snakes behind his neck and linked themselves together.

With a flash of pale blue light, the elderly man felt the loose skin around his body smooth out and regain the softness of youth. Granted, his bones and muscles shrank down a little to the size of an exceptionally short teenager, but compared to a restoration of full-colored hair, perfect eyesight, and youthful energy, a slight loss of height wasn't a big deal at all.

When the light faded away, in the old man's place was Yuri, former Prince of the Dimension of the Gods. He stretched out his newly restored young form and sighed, "Ah, so good to be back."

"Glad to hear it," Spencer smiled. "Now, then, The Three said they'd try to get in contact with someone who could open up the portal to Grimm's Realm, and that once they did so, they'd be certain to put it up behind the Game Shop, where we could access it without anybody else getting a chance to do so."

"All right, then, let's go see if it's there for us."

The two walked to the Game Shop door and Spencer pushed it open with the jingle of a bell above.

They froze in the doorway. Their eyes grew wide as they took in the sight outside of the Game Shop.

Before them stood a lush grove of gnarled, twisting trees covered with an array of dark, oblong foliage and round, ripe olives awaiting the harvest. A gentle stream of water trickled through the midst of the wooden plants, running directly underneath the archways of their penetrating roots. In the center of this fertile grove was a Grecian temple made of pristine marble that shone in the sunlight.

"What in the world…?" Spencer's voice trailed off.

"Per-haps the fairy tale creature just put the portal up here, where there was already a doorway," Yuri suggested hopefully.

"_Or _perhaps this queen, whichever one she is, found out that we caught on to her plan and wants to get rid of us before we can ruin the whole thing," Spencer snarled. He looked up at the ceiling and snapped, "All right, missy, we'll go along with your game, but don't think for one second that you're actually going to win it!"

* * *

The Queen laughed aloud. "Keep thinking that while you can, young man. You won't be able to do that at all, once you've fallen prey to the golden touch…"

* * *

Slowly, Spencer and Yuri stepped through the doorway to Grimm's Realm, a cool breeze of air sweeping over them as they entered. In the second they stepped through, their clothing was transformed to match the Grecian scenery: Spencer was clad in a flowing, dark blue toga fastened around one shoulder with a golden pin, and Yuri wore a light blue tunic with a gold sash wrapped around his waist.

"Which fairy tale is this supposed to be?" Yuri asked as he looked around the clearing.

"I'm not quite sure…" Spencer murmured. "It's definitely based off of a Grecian myth, though…which one would it be specifically…?"

As though it was responding to the question, a glimmer of golden light suddenly appeared in the air above them. The pulsating energy the two of them felt it emitting was unmistakably of a divine source.

From out of the light emerged another young man, clad in a sort of tunic made out of a leopard's black-spotted skin. Golden-blonde hair hung long down his back, giving him a feminine appearance, and in his hand he clutched a staff covered in twisting green vines, topped with a large pinecone.

"Wait…now I know, I believe…" Spencer murmured at the sight of the man. "This must be-"

Before he could finish, the divinity suddenly flung out his hand, sending a shower of tiny golden sparkles out towards them. Yuri managed to jump away from them in time, landing with a thud on the grassy ground, but Spencer caught a full blast of the magic right in his face, coughing and gasping as the sparkles flew into his eyes and open mouth.

The golden-haired one smiled and nodded, clearly pleased with his act. Yuri watched as he stepped back into the light surrounding him, which disappeared just as quickly as it had come. He expected Spencer to scream after the man for throwing the gold magic straight at them, perhaps call him a coward for just running away afterwards.

But he didn't do a thing. He just stood right where he was, staring up into the space where the man had been with an utterly blank look on his face.

Yuri stared, too, up at Spencer. Something certainly wasn't right with him.

He picked himself up from the ground and cautiously walked over to the king, afraid of snapping him violently out of his stupor. "Spencer?" he murmured softly. "Are you…all right?"

Without even glancing towards him, Spencer knelt down to the ground. Yuri watched as he slowly reached out one hand, staring at it in utter fascination, and pointed out one finger to touch the very tip of one blade of grass on the ground.

The blade became surrounded by a shining gold aura. Yuri watched in amazement as the little piece of verdure transformed into a shining blade of pure, pristine gold sticking up out of the ground.

Spencer gasped at the sight of the gold grass. When he turned to Yuri, he could see that his eyes were filled with childlike amazement from the sight. "It's…beautiful…isn't it?" he slowly breathed out in awe.

Yuri was a bit taken aback by the king's sudden obsession. "Uhh…yes, I guess it is…"

Grinning mischievously, Spencer leapt up from the ground and walked towards one of the olive trees. He reached out and wrapped one hand around a branch closest to the ground.

The gold aura now enveloped the tree and, in a dazzling display, the bark, leaves, and olives transformed from lush greenery to glistening gold. Spencer burst into a sort of maniacal laughter at the sight.

Worry lines crossed Yuri's face. What had the man in the light done to him? Evidently he'd given Spencer the power to turn whatever he touched into gold, but there was more to it than that; he'd become practically crazed at the mere sight of the shining substance.

"Spencer?" Yuri slowly stepped towards Spencer as he gently stroked the trunk of the golden olive tree. "We're here in Grimm's Realm now-shouldn't we go and look for the others?"

Spencer paused in his caressing of the flawless substance with a jolt. He jumped back to his feet, and when he turned around, Yuri couldn't help but gasp and step back at the livid look in his violet eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere," he snarled, his outline starting to glow as brightly as the gold he'd created with his touch. "Not when there's a fortune of gold to be made here."

With that, he turned and walked to another olive tree. Yuri could only watch in shock as he placed his hand against the bark and once more transformed the greenery to gold.

_Blast it. _Yuri narrowed his eyes. _The Queen's had him afflicted with some kind of gold fever!_

* * *

"Ah, that's much better," The Queen heaved a sigh of relief as she watched Spencer begin to transform almost everything in his path into gold. "For a moment there I honestly believed that all of my hard work was going to be for naught."

She smiled to herself as she stood up and closed the thick _Fairy Tales_ book with a thud. "Now, then…" She picked the book up, grasping it firmly to her chest as though it was her lifeline. "I'm already well aware that the rest of the heroes' fates have been sealed, but last I saw the lovesick girl had yet to meet up with her admired one, so..."

She leaned in towards the mirror. "Mirror, mirror, do be kind and show her to me once more so that I can be certain that I may secure my reign…"


	6. Chapter Five: Beauty and the Beast

Chapter Five: Beauty and the Beast

Téa wrapped her arms around herself as tightly as she could, what with Yugi's Millennium Puzzle box clutched between them and her chest, as the freezing cold wind brought goosebumps to her exposed skin. In any other case she would have thought her new outfit was cute, but in the chilly weather, a thick cloak or jacket was preferred over the tube top and skirt.

Her teeth chattered as another arctic breeze blew through the forest, shaking the bare branches of the trees together with little clicks and clacks. She jumped back with a shriek as a branch waved down right in front of her face, threatening to scratch her eye. She was sorely tempted to turn back and get out of the miserable place, wherever it was.

As she reached up one hand to push the branch away, however, she felt it run across the gold Egyptian eye carved into the container she held. With a glance down at it, the thought that Yugi had to be in trouble came rushing back to her memory.

Filled with renewed determination, she angrily swiped the thin branch away from her face with so much force that it snapped right off the tree trunk and onto the dusty earth.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of wandering through the dark, polar woods, Téa caught a glimpse of something glittering through the cluster of trees. Sucking in a breath of hope, she hurried up her darting between the gnarled grey towers around her.

When she stepped out into the clearing, however, her heart sank.

While above her she could actually see the sky, the sun just a tiny white circle shining dimly through the grey clouds, before her stretched a frozen pond so huge that the trees on the other side were mere twigs in the distance. The thick coating of ice which covered it glimmered under the faint light.

"Oh great," she whispered in exasperation as she sat down heavily on the bare ground. "How on earth am I supposed to cross that thing…?"

Téa heaved a sigh as she laid down, a cloud of dust forming around her with her thud against the earth. This was just excellent…for all she knew, one mere step onto the pond would send her hurdling into the watery depths below. If her powers actually worked here, then she could just soar above the icy layer, but for some reason beyond her comprehension, not one of her abilities were functioning; when she'd tried to zap herself up warmer clothing, all that she'd gotten out of her finger was a measly pink spark that fizzled almost the instant after it appeared.

She gently stroked the mini-sarcophagus she still clutched, feeling its little grooves and carvings running against her fingers. _Yugi...where are you…?_

She closed her eyes, the unbearably cold wind becoming barely noticeable as her thoughts and focus turned to the young man with the tri-colored hair. A small tear trickled down her cheek.

_Wherever you are…just let me know that you're all right…_

A faint screeching sound that came to her ears suddenly snapped her out of her thoughts. She opened her eyes and sat up in shock. "Wha…?"

Her gaze fell onto some sort of huddled, brown and blue thing in the distance, slowly making its way across the ice-covered pond. She couldn't quite see why, but with each step it took, an ear-splitting noise like chalk being dragged across the blackboard came from its direction.

Her heart started to pound wildly as it came nearer and nearer. She stood up almost automatically, preparing to run at any given moment, and gripped the little gold box even tighter. "What is that thing?" she whispered in horror.

The 'thing' was one of the most fearsome creatures she'd ever seen in her entire life-and considering how many of the ferocious Duel Monsters she'd watched her duelist friends play, that was no small statement. It most closely reminded her of a lion, though it was walking upright. It was almost entirely covered in brown, shaggy fur, save for its head which was surrounded with a mane of wild, flowing black hair with red and yellow fringes. Sticking up from underneath the folds of its mane was a pair of smooth, curved horns, gleaming like pure ivory, with sharp claws to match protruding from the digits on its human-shaped hands and feet. The latter, she could see, were emitting the shrill sound every time they scratched across the surface of the ice with a footstep.

When it was just a few feet away from Téa, the creature stopped in the middle of the ice. She froze in her spot, for though she couldn't quite see its eyes, hidden under the folds of fur, she just knew that it was gazing directly at her.

The two stared at each other for a few moments, neither of them making a move.

_Go away…whatever you are...please…_Téa silently pleaded with the creature.

Instead of leaving, though, the thing got down onto all fours. She had to swallow a shriek rising to her mouth, for when it bent over she could see that protruding from the beast's back was a pair of black-feathered wings pulled in at rest, and a tail covered with shining cerulean scales.

The creature crouched down towards the icy floor, stretching out its furry back and poking its rear end towards the sky.

_Oh god no…_

* * *

The Queen burst into laughter at the sight of Téa's horrified face in the mirror, clutching onto the back of her chair to support herself. "Marvelous! She's absolutely terrified by the mere sight of it! Oh, this is too wonderful-with her flat-out disgusted by that 'creature,' she's just guaranteed herself an unhappy ending!"

Her cackling of triumph reverberated throughout the empty library. The chortle slowly subsided, however, as thoughts of doubt crept into The Queen's mind. "Although…" She paused. "If the thing manages to catch up with her, and she figures out who exactly it is…they might still be able to obtain their happily ever after…"

She stroked her chin pensively. "Hmm…perhaps I should take one more precaution against that; I wouldn't want to ruin my chances of obtaining a new kingdom to reign over, after all…"

* * *

With a small roar of exertion, the beast took a flying leap into the air, its furry body covering what little was seen of the sun. On the peak of its bound, the thing spread its wings out to their full extent, flapping them to sustain its altitude for the remaining distance.

The moment Téa saw it begin to descend, heading straight for the ground before her, she finally broke out of the iron grip of fear and dashed forward onto the pond. She didn't care about the possibility of slipping and sliding on the ice; that was a far better alternative to meeting up with whatever the heck that thing was.

* * *

The Queen smiled nastily as she watched Téa ran and slid her way across the ice-covered pond. "Perfect…"

She pointed out one finger towards the mirror's image. A nearly imperceptible violet spark shot into the air and straight through the glass, forcing the scene to waver like water struck with a stone.

* * *

Téa shrieked as her feet slipped out from beneath her and she smacked backside-down onto the ice-covered ground. She groaned as she slowly sat up, her rear aching from the incredibly hard and fast fall.

When she heard the sound of the creature roaring from behind her, however, the pain almost instantly became a distant memory. She hurriedly picked herself up from the ground and continued across the polar floor, praying in desperation that she wouldn't lose her balance again.

She was so focused on getting to the other side of the pond that the tiny little spark of violet which appeared by her feet went completely unnoticed. The magic hovered closely to the ground near her for a few moments, as though it was ensuring that it would remain undetected.

Finally, at the point where Téa had reached the near center of the pond, it struck.

It all happened so quickly; one moment she heard the crack of ice beneath her feet, the next she was suddenly submerged in a freezing, wavering world of midnight blue.

The arctic shock of the water almost completely paralyzed Téa, only letting her blink in surprise as she took in her surroundings. The freezing liquid directly around her was lit to a soft aqua color by the small amount of light coming through the hole in the ice above her; that which remained out of the light's reach stretched out into a dark, endless abyss, floating deeper into which could only lead to a numbingly cold death.

She finally snapped out of her shock when she realized that the faintly shining water around her was slowly falling out of her reach, her body sinking deeper and deeper into the chilly liquid. She desperately tried to claw her way up towards the light, but something else, far stronger than her, was pulling her back.

She took a glance down towards her feet and saw, to her absolute horror, the faint glimmer of violet magic which had wrapped itself tightly around her ankle and was yanking her with all of its might down into the black void of coldness below her. She brought her knees up to her chest, released one hand from clutching the Millennium Puzzle box, and tried desperately to pull the sparks off of her, but of course mere force wouldn't release her from a magical grasp.

* * *

The Queen laughed maniacally at Téa's vain effort to free herself from her power's grasp. "You might as well save your strength, my dear," she taunted the image. "There's no way you'll be able to escape your watery grave."

* * *

_Get off! Get off! _Téa screamed hysterically in her mind as she tugged in vain at the magical energy pulling her to her death. Her body felt as though it was being struck with thousands of tiny little needles at once, stung fiercely by the polar liquid, and her lungs were practically bursting for air.

* * *

The Queen's laughter was suddenly interrupted by a shout: "Who on earth are you?!"

She stopped chortling and glanced in the direction of the voice. A young woman with brunette hair pulled back in a ponytail and glasses on a chain around her neck stood in the doorway to the book-filled room, eyes flashing with anger at the sight of the intruder in her domain.

"Ma'am, I don't know how you got into here," the woman spoke as she stepped inside, "but nobody's just allowed to enter this school without permission. I'm afraid you'll have to accompany me to the principal's off-"

The Queen snapped her fingers.

Violet rays of magic suddenly encircled the librarian, wrapping themselves tightly around her and completely binding her together from her ankles all the way up to her mouth. She blinked in shock and let out very faint, muffled screams from within her bindings as she squirmed to set herself free, but she only succeeded in falling down to the carpeted floor, wriggling like a worm.

"Do not ever speak to me like that again," The Queen ordered the helpless woman. "That is certainly not how one properly addresses their new master."

* * *

_No…_

Téa's strength started to wane as the lack of oxygen began to overcome her. She slowly released her grip from the violet magic, her hand gently lifted above her head by the tug of the water moving against her. Her other hand she tried desperately to keep around the little gold box; she needed to keep it, to return it to Yugi once she found him…

A faint voice in the back of her mind told her that her thought was far too clouded and dumbly optimistic. She'd never find Yugi now…not when she was…

* * *

The Queen stole a glance back at her magic mirror. The girl's body had become limp in the midst of the water, her sapphire eyes slowly starting to dim and close.

A sickly sweet smile crossed her face. "That should be enough."

With another snap of her fingers, the violet magic around Téa's ankle dissipated into the dark waters. It wouldn't be needed anymore; the damage had been done.

"Now, mirror, mirror," The Queen asked, "if I try to take over this world, then…?"

The image in the mirror became clouded over with green wisps of smoke. The wisps congregated into the ghastly face in the center of the glass once more, who replied:

_You shall rule it, your power uncontested,_

_For at the moment, the heroes have been bested._

"Wonderful."

The Queen raised her hands above her head. Her outline became surrounded with a glistening violet aura, and violet sparks of magic started to shoot out of her fingers. "I do believe I shall begin by establishing this place as my home…"

The librarian watched on the floor, helpless and stunned, as blinding violet rays of light started shooting out of The Queen's hands, her laughter resounding throughout the entire room as the magic started to take its effect…

* * *

_Yugi…_

Téa slowly started to close her eyes, invisible tears forming within them at the thought of her friend in peril.

_I'm so sorry…_

The world around her became one of pure cold and darkness. The last thing she felt before she finally left it was something a bit slimy and stringy brushing up against her outstretched hand…


	7. Chapter Six: Amethyst Eyes

Chapter Six: Amethyst Eyes

Téa awoke to a dark yet warm world. Potential chills threatened her from rushing wind above, but the heat by her side, accompanied by tiny crackling noises, forced the coolness away in lieu of the calm, soothing sensation it sent throughout her body. She didn't want to open her eyes, didn't want to see if she was truly…truly…

Eventually she resigned to the fact that she had no choice; she couldn't very well stay in a sleep-like state forever. Very slowly, she opened her eyes, bracing herself for whatever she'd see.

Above her was a familiar grey, cloudy sky, with the faint glimmer of the sun shining through. She blinked in utter surprise; was she really back up on land?

She quickly sat up and glanced around. She was lying on the ground near the frozen lake, the only side of her ordeal being the jagged hole in the ice where she'd fallen in. To her side, the Millennium Puzzle box sat by a pile of old branches, evidently taken from the barren woods, set ablaze to create the nice, warm sensation which countered the chill of the winds.

Téa stared at the fire in shock. Someone had saved her from drowning and tried to warm her up, but…who on earth had been around to see her in that desolate place?

A low growl reached her ears from her other side, snapping her out of her thoughts. When she glanced in the noise's direction, she let out a tiny gasp of shock.

The creature was huddled up into a ball a little bit away from her by the pond's edge. It quickly looked away when it saw her glancing towards him and stared at the ground in slight embarrassment. The entirety of its body was damp with water, the brown fur plastered to its sides in smooth, dark lumps and little droplets falling off its black-feathered wings.

She couldn't believe her eyes when she saw the beast was soaked. _Did that thing…save me? _

As hard as that thought was to believe, there was certainly no other explanation. Nobody else was around in that cold, dark place, and why else would the beast have been dripping wet?

And shaking…now that she looked more closely, she could faintly see that it was shivering in its place, huddled together in a futile attempt to stay warm despite the mix of chilly wind in the air and freezing water soaked into its fur.

Téa's heart went out towards the creature. _Poor thing…why isn't it over here by the fire?_

Almost at the exact moment the thought came to her mind, she knew the answer. The distance from the warm embers, the quick look away to avoid meeting her gaze…the thing didn't want to scare her again, even going so far as to not try to acknowledge her presence.

_Well, I don't blame it…I didn't exactly give it a warm welcome before, did I?_

Téa shook her head at the thought of her attempt to flee. "I made a bad judgment call before, didn't I…" she murmured to herself.

Smiling wanly, she got to her feet and made her way over to the creature. She saw its little ears twitch slightly from under its mane, so she knew it heard her approaching, but it still kept its eyes locked onto the ground.

When she'd gotten close enough, Téa knelt down by its side. "Hello."

The creature turned its head slightly towards her, but it still tried hard to avoid her gaze.

"You saved me from drowning, didn't you?" She gently reached out and stroked the creature's slick-furred shoulder. "Even after I tried to run from you in horror, you still helped me out. I don't quite understand why you did it, but thank you."

A pause. The creature then let out a soft growl, assumedly as its way of saying 'you're welcome'.

"You shouldn't be over here; you must be freezing cold under that coat of wet fur." She gently reached out and took its dampened paw. "The fire's really nice."

With some hesitation, the beast slowly brought itself to its feet and let Téa guide it towards the blazing embers. She sat it down right in front of the fire so that the waves of heat could fully penetrate its watered-down fur.

"There you go; isn't that better?"

The creature held out its paws towards the flames, its ivory claws glistening with the dance of the embers. When she sat down beside it, she could see that a tiny smile had crept onto its face.

"I'm sorry about just running from you before. When you came practically charging towards me, I…" Her voice trailed off. There wasn't exactly a nice way she could say that the beast had scared her out of her wits.

It, however, seemed to understand what she was trying to say. The grin on its face faded, and it hung its head in shame.

"Oh, don't feel bad," she hurriedly said. "You can't help…what you are." She reached up and brushed some of the strands of its mane out of its face. "You just may have to work on how exactly you approach people before they know you."

It didn't even glance towards her.

"C'mon, please look at me." She cupped her hand under its chin and gently turned its head towards her. "I'm not afraid of you anymore."

She gently pulled some of the black and brown fur away so that she could finally look it in its eyes.

A gasp escaped from her mouth. The creature's eyes, narrowed into a perpetually stern glare, were the deepest shade of violet, sparkling like amethysts in the light of the fire.

She knew those eyes from anywhere. They reminded her so much of two young men, one whose compassion knew no bounds, the other whose strength and bravery had no equal…

"Yugi?" she breathed out in awe.

* * *

Pharaoh lowered his eyes and looked down at the ground. The cost of avoiding her surprised gaze, however, was once again being forced to stare at his hands. They were completely unfamiliar to him, what with their excess of brown hair and razor-sharp claws.

It was shameful, the monstrous state he was in. He should have instantly been on guard the moment he stepped into the other realm, and instead he allowed himself to easily be transformed into this…this…_thing, _with no way to turn himself back (none that he was aware of at that moment, anyway).

How could he possibly face Téa after something as humiliating as that?

To his shock, however, she leapt forward and flung her arms around his neck, not caring in the least how soaked he still was.

"Oh, I'm so relieved…" She looked up him with tears forming in her eyes. "I was so sure…I mean, when I first got that box…I thought that…that it meant something worse…"

She indicated the gold, miniature sarcophagus that sat by the burning wood. He'd been wondering why exactly Téa had been carrying that when he pulled her out of the pond, but he hadn't dared to even near it yet; not when she had been convinced he was some sort of evil monstrosity.

Téa picked up the box, placed it onto her lap and removed the lid. Pharaoh peered inside to see the Millennium Puzzle lying within, broken once more into pieces.

"I'm going to bet that if you want to get out of that state, you have to put the Puzzle back together again," she smiled.

He let out a depressed sigh at the sound of that. It had taken eight years for the Puzzle to be completed the first time. Certainly this time it would be faster, since Yugi had already done it before, but what if that meant it would _only _take, say, four years?

…Only that it'd be best to get started, then.

The change was almost imperceptible, but Téa could just barely see the differences. The beast's eyes widened and took on a more innocent gaze, the red and yellow fringes on its mane shortened in length, and its body appeared to become a bit smaller in size.

Yugi reached inside of the box and pulled out the rather large piece with the leather string wrapped around the loop on top. Téa watched as he gazed at it thoughtfully for a few moments before reaching back inside the box and pulling out another, noticeably smaller piece. He slowly moved the two together, and they fastened one inside of the other with a small _click_.

"See? You're one step closer to getting back to normal already!" Téa giggled.

Yugi smiled wanly at her before he reached into the box again and searched carefully for yet another piece.

For the next half-hour, Yugi slowly put together the Millennium Puzzle again, taking on the task piece by piece. Téa watched with bated breath as the base of the gold pyramid slowly formed, creating the proper foundation for the miniature Pharaoh's tomb. Gradually the four walls began to take shape, their golden parts shining brightly in the light of the fire. A few times Yugi became frustrated with his attempt to fit one tiny, stubborn little piece into its place at last, but Téa's reassurance that he could certainly do this once more helped him carry onward.

At long last, the pyramid's body had been formed in near entirety. There was just one piece left for it to be complete: the one with the Eye of Osiris protruding from the center.

When Yugi reached inside the box, however, his fingers only gripped at air.

The two glanced into the box in horror to see that it was empty.

"But…where did that last piece go?!" Téa cried.

Yugi fished around the interior, hoping vainly that perhaps it was invisible or something, a cruel joke on that witch's part. He glanced up at Téa with question marks in his amethyst eyes.

"I don't know what happened," she swore. "When I got that box, I never let it out of my sight. Not even once."

Yugi sadly glanced down at the ground, still clutching the partly-finished Millennium Puzzle in his hands. He knew she wasn't lying; she would never do that to him.

So, that was it, then. He was destined to spend the rest of his life in this abominable form. He winced in horror at the thought. How in the world was he going to be able to keep living in his own world when he looked so atrocious?

"Yugi…" Téa gently reached out and took his paw into her hand, tears forming in her eyes. "I'm sorry…maybe it fell out into the lake…"

He quickly looked up at her and shook his head. When he'd gotten to her, even in her unconscious state she was holding tightly onto the Millennium Puzzle box, the lid remaining firmly sealed under her grasp.

It was just like Téa, to ensure that her friends and their possessions would be safe no matter what. She was so caring and thoughtful like that…he was so lucky to have someone like her in his life…

Now that he looked at her, actually, he noticed for the first time just how beautiful she was. Her eyes especially…with the tears glistening in their corners, they looked like starry sapphires glittering amongst a shining sea.

"Well, it's not so bad, really," Téa smiled wanly. She reached out and gently stroked the fur on his face. "It could have been worse; at least in this form you're nice to pet."

He let out a small, playful growl in protest.

"I'm just kidding," she laughed. "I know it seems bad right now, but I'm sure there's some way we'll be able to make it work. Spencer might know a spell or something to make you look human again."

Her eyes glanced shyly towards the ground. "And…I don't really care what you look like, anyway…"

She could feel Yugi's wide eyes on her as a warming blush rose to her cheeks. Could she really…do this? Just pour out all of her feelings right here and now?

Well, they were most definitely alone…and since he was in this strange form, he couldn't really speak and interrupt her, so she could be free to say as much as she pleased…

"Guys, I…" She swallowed and started to talk, letting the words just flow out as they came to mind. "I don't really know how to say this, but…for the longest time, I've felt…something else towards you…I mean, Yugi, you're such a saint, and Pharaoh, you're so incredibly strong and brave…" She grinned. "You guys are quite a pair."

Yugi blinked. Was she trying to say what he thought she was trying to say?

"You guys are so great, and I…I…" She took in a deep breath. "I love you."

There. She'd said it. Just three little words, yet when spoken, they carried the weight of thousands of years' worth of sweet, delicate feelings and tender moments. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the oncoming reaction.

For a moment, the only sounds she heard were the whoosh of the wind and the crackling of the fire's little embers. Her heart sank at the thought that maybe she'd surprised him into awkward silence-or even worse, that he didn't feel for her in that same way…

Then, she heard a distinct scratching noise coming from between the two of them. She opened one eye just a crack and saw through her slightly blurred vision that Yugi was running his claw through the earth. Perhaps he didn't really know what to say to that…no, wait…it looked like he was writing something…

She opened her eyes fully as he finished the message. Her eyes widened as she read it. Just four little words, but…she gasped with a mixture of shock and delight. She kept reading them over and over, imprinting their message firmly in her mind:

**I love you too.**

She looked up and grinned at him brightly. Tears of joy started to run down her face; she didn't even bother to try and stop them. He smiled at her in response, and for just a few moments, thousands of little words of delight passed between their mere gazes.

A glow from the Millennium Puzzle finally snapped them out of their staring. They looked down and watched as, in the one remaining empty space, the missing piece slowly appeared, the pupil of the Eye of Osiris glowing brightly with shining white light.

With another passing moment, the beast suddenly shone with a luminescent aura. Pharaoh, who'd taken back over with the Puzzle restored, looked down at his hands and watched in shock as the thick patches of brown fur and sharp ivory claws slowly started to recede back into his body, leaving behind nothing but pink, soft flesh.

He let out a cry of pain as the feathery wings and scaly tail were violently yanked back into his body with a sick sucking noise. Téa quickly reached out and stroked his shoulder to calm him down as he felt the skin rebuild itself over the empty holes left behind. This was followed by his clothing magically reappearing on his body as the last remaining patches of fur disappeared and his hair stood straight back up in its spiky position once more.

He deeply panted in shock as his transformation back into a human became complete. "My, that was intense…" he gasped out.

Téa let out a quiet laugh. "At least you're back to normal." She gently brushed his yellow fringe out of his face. "I always did like you this way."

He smiled at her and reached out to caress her cheek. "I like you this way as well."

With that, Pharaoh did the only thing he felt was appropriate for the moment: he leaned forward, gently wrapped his arms around Téa, and pressed his lips up against hers.

In just that one kiss, sapphire and amethyst came together to exchange a tender expression of passion and sheer ecstasy. Téa couldn't help but shake with delight and let more tears fall down her face, while Pharaoh and Yugi, too, enjoyed the gentle warmth of the soft, lip-locking embrace.

Finally, the two pulled away from one another with wide grins on their faces. "Wow," was all that Téa could get out.

"Incredible," Pharaoh murmured in assent.

They continued to gaze at one another until a glimpse of green from behind Pharaoh caught Téa's eye. "Hey, what's that?" she asked.

He turned to see that behind them, hovering in midair, was a circular entryway surrounded by a glowing white aura. Within the portal-like doorway, they could see the very tops of trees in a far more fertile and lush forest than the one they were in.

"Interesting," Pharaoh said as they stood up. "It appears there's more to this place than what we've seen thus far."

He stepped towards the portal, but Téa quickly placed her hand onto his shoulder to stop him. "Wait-what if this is some kind of trap? We can't use our powers here; I've already tried."

"As have I." He looked over his shoulder to give her a smile of reassurance. "But as long as we're together, I'm certain that we'll be able to defeat whatever comes our way."

Téa grinned brightly. "Right."

He reached behind him and took her hand into his. "Let's go."

The two walked through the doorway, its image wavering as they entered the new part of the unknown world.


	8. Chapter Seven: NotSoSweet Witch

Chapter Seven: Not-So-Sweet Witch

Although the two were wary of stepping into another part of the world they were in, considering the first area they'd been in, both Pharaoh and Téa couldn't deny that this part, at least, was by far much nicer. The forest was in the prime of summer, with delicate green leaves decorating the brown-barked trees and golden rays of sunlight shining through the cracks in between. Life was prominent in this part of the realm, with little birds chirruping from their perches on branches and furry squirrels darting up and down trunks with acorns gripped in their mouths.

As they stepped a bit further into the world, enjoying the feeling of the warm soaking up the chill still in their bones, a distinct whooshing noise made them turn around. The portal had shrunk down to a little glowing orb which disappeared before their eyes.

"Well, I guess there's no going back," Téa laughed a bit nervously.

"Don't worry; things will get better from here on, I'm certain," Pharaoh squeezed her hand reassuringly.

The feeling of his strong yet warm grasp was a great comfort to Téa, and the smile on her face clearly showed it. When she glanced up and past him through the clusters of green trees, however, her expression became one of confusion.

"Hey, what's that?" she pointed out.

Pharaoh turned and followed the direction of her outstretched finger to see that sitting in a clearing amongst the trees was what appeared to be a small house made of some sort of brown, rough substance, fastened together with thick white paste and decorated with all sorts of brightly-colored objects.

"Interesting residence," Pharaoh commented as the two stepped towards the home. "Whoever built it has rather peculiar tastes."

_Um, Pharaoh, it's a little bit more than peculiar, _Yugi's voice spoke to him. _It's made of candy!_

_What?? _

_See those walls?_ Yugi pointed at the brown substance in his mind's eye._ They're made of a treat in our world called gingerbread. The white stuff running along its edges is called icing, and all of those colored things are gumdrops, licorice, candy canes…_

Pharaoh blinked in surprise. "This home is made entirely of comestibles?" he said aloud.

"Well, it certainly looks like someone's been enjoying it." Téa pointed at one side of the house, where someone had clearly bitten off some of the edge of the gingerbread roof, a window filled with clear rock candy had only jagged edges remaining of its 'glass,' and a few of the more decorative arrangements of candy were missing their pieces, leaving behind only spots of white icing which had held them in place.

"Who exactly would live in a place like this?" Pharaoh inquired. "I mean, certainly you'd never go hungry, but…"

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a familiar voice drifting out the open window: "LET US OUTTA HERE, YA BUTT-UGLY WITCH!"

"THE MINUTE WE GET OUR POWERS BACK, YOU'RE GONNA REGRET THIS!" a second voice added.

Pharaoh and Téa exchanged a wide-eyed glance. He silently motioned for her to kneel down, and the two quietly tiptoed around to the side of the house with the open window.

Very slowly, they rose up just a bit so that their eyes were level with the window sill. Inside, the gingerbread home was quite sparsely furnished, with only pretzels twisted together in the forms of a table and chairs and a bed made entirely out of pink, fluffy cotton candy sitting atop hardened blocks of caramel. Gingerbread shelves fastened onto the walls with more of the white icing were aligned with dusty, leather-covered books and glasses filled with assorted animal body parts.

Hanging from heavy chains attached to the roof were two large bird cages made entirely out of iron. Sitting inside of the cages were Joey and Tristan, who angrily yanked at the bars in futile attempts to move them while they yelled at their captive, a haggard witch clad in a black cloak shoving more wood onto a blazing fire in a stove built into the corner of a gingerbread wall.

The witch cackled at Tristan's last comment. "Foolish boy; what sort of magical powers do you have, aside from an uncanny ability to eat food at an incredibly fast rate?" She turned to give her captives a near-toothless grin. "That one's quite all right with me, though. More food in your bellies means more mortal boys for me to eat!"

"Why doncha c'mere an eat dis, ya old hag?" Joey muttered as she turned back to the fire, holding up a clenched fist.

Pharaoh and Téa backed down from the window. "She's seriously going to eat the guys?!" Téa whispered in shock.

"It would appear so," Pharaoh nodded. "We must find a way to get them out of there."

They quietly crept back up towards the windowsill and glanced around the room once more. "Do you see a key of any sort around the place?"

"There!" Téa pointed towards the far end of the house, where a large iron key hung upon a pixie stick shoved into the wall.

While the slightly deaf witch didn't hear the cry of excitement, Joey and Tristan distinctly heard the sound of their friend's voice. The two glanced in its direction and saw their friends at the window, who motioned for them to stay silent.

Pharaoh glanced around the candied house. "Hmm, let's see…there must be something we could use to…aha!" His eyes fell onto precisely what he needed: a long peppermint stick running across the side of the house. "Téa, give me a hand, please."

The two reached up and started to pull as hard as they could on the twisted red and white stick.

A loud, wrenching noise came from the stick as part of it pulled away from the sticky icing. The witch jerked her head up at the sound and cried out, "What was that?"

Pharaoh and Téa froze. Joey and Tristan quickly covered for them by starting up their angry yells all over again: "'EY, IF YOU'RE SO HARD A HEARIN', DEN HOW DO YA KNOW WE'RE SO GOOD FOR EATIN'?!" "YEAH, FOR ALL WE KNOW, YOU'RE AS BLIND AS A BAT!"

The witch shook her head at the sound of their foolish raving and went back to tending the wood-burning stove.

While Joey and Tristan continued screaming at the tops of their lungs, Pharaoh and Téa quickly yanked the rest of the peppermint stick off of the house. They turned it so that one of its ends pointed right towards the open window.

Slowly, carefully, they pushed the peppermint stick into the gingerbread house, aligning its end with the center of the large loop on the top of the key. "Just a little bit more…" Pharaoh murmured.

Finally, the red and white stick went through the open circle. The two gently lifted the peppermint stick up, touching it against the top of the loop, and pulled the key straight off its pixie stick.

Taking great care not to let it slip, Pharaoh and Téa moved the peppermint stick back until it was just an inch or so away from the bars of the bird cages. While Tristan kept up the angry raving, Joey very slowly stretched one arm out between the bars, straining to reach the iron key.

The witch chose that exact moment to turn around and check on her future meal.

Everyone froze as she stared at them with a livid look in her eye, the key just a tiny bit away from Joey's grasp.

Her step forward finally sprang the teens into action. Pharaoh and Téa quickly pushed down on their end of the stick, sending the other end flying upwards. With the sudden jolt, the key leapt off of the stick and went soaring through the air above Joey and Tristan's cages.

Joey quickly pulled his hand back into the cage and shoved it back out above his head just a few seconds before the key flew by. "OH YEAH!"

The witch bustled over to him, but Tristan stuck out his hand and yanked on the back of her cloak. She angrily reached her hands out and grabbed at the air in a futile attempt to get it as Joey stuck the key into the lock on his cage and turned it.

While he kicked the door open with his foot and jumped out of his prison, Pharaoh and Téa quickly dashed around the house and crashed through the door. When the latter two grabbed onto the witch, ensuring that she wouldn't be able to move, Tristan pulled his arm back into his cage and waited while Joey unlocked the iron-barred door.

"How dare you, little brats!" the witch yelled as Tristan shoved his door open. In a softer, elderly voice, she added: "How could you deny an innocent old woman the right to have a nice two-course meal?"

"You don't need us; just go outside and take a few chunks outta your house," Joey snapped.

Once Tristan had gotten down, the four teens turned and quickly dashed towards the open doorway. While Pharaoh and Téa got outside, however, they heard two loud yelps from behind them.

They turned to see that Joey and Tristan were slammed up against some sort of invisible wall which had formed in the midst of the doorway, their faces distorted as they pressed up against the barrier.

The witch laughed hysterically as the two slid down to the floor. "Silly children. I've always been wary of little brats finding some way to make their escape, so I've put up some nice spells that prevent absolutely _anyone_ who eats some of my house from leaving!"

Pharaoh and Téa quickly darted back into the house and helped their friends get up while the witch turned back to her fire. "You two boys get back into your cages, now," the witch sneered as she shoved another log onto the crackling blaze. "Try to escape too much and you'll lose some of that delicious meat on your bones; that barrier's not coming down for as long as I live."

Joey and Tristan turned and glared angrily at the witch's back. "Well, den, let's fix dat," Joey snarled under his breath.

"On three, man?" Tristan hissed to his friend.

Joey nodded. "Yeah, on three."

A pause. Then, "THREE!"

Pharaoh and Téa watched in shock as the two rushed forward, roaring with anger, and shoved the witch into the stove. As she fell into the inferno, they slammed the oven door shut and pressed their backs up against it in case she tried to get out.

For a few minutes, the four heard muffled screams of pain from within the oven, accompanied by desperate scratching against the gingerbread door in a futile attempt to escape the flames. When the noises faded away, thick clouds of black, sparkling smoke began to emit from the tiny cracks between the oven door and wall. The teenagers hacked and wheezed as the dark haze quickly spread throughout the entirety of the house, stinging their eyes shut and filling their lungs with black, putrid air. Pharaoh reached out with one hand and blindly felt around his side until he brushed up against Téa's own palm, taking it into his grasp to ensure that she wouldn't vanish on him.

Finally, after what seemed like a sickening eternity, the feeling of the dark haze pressing against the teens' eyelids faded away, and the air that filled their lungs became clean and breathable again. When they opened their eyes, they saw that every last piece of the gingerbread house had vanished, the witch's creation destroyed along with her. Not even an impression of the house in the ground remained, with fresh blades of grass springing up from the earth beneath their feet.

It took Joey and Tristan a few moments to realize that they no longer had something they were leaning up against, at which point it was too late to get back up and they slammed down hard onto the ground. They groaned in pain as they sat up and rubbed at their sore bottoms, but when their eyes fell onto Pharaoh and Téa's interlocked hands, the pain almost instantly died with the newfound shock.

The stunned gaze of their friend's eyes practically forced Pharaoh and Téa to let go of one another. The two slightly turned away from one another and glanced down at the ground, their faces turning light shades of crimson with embarrassed blushes. It wasn't that they didn't want their friends to know about their relationship in entirety; they just had a bit more pressing matters to take care of at the moment.

Joey and Tristan exchanged glances with one another. The same question passed silently between the both of them: _Are they an item now?_

Any further thoughts about the protective grasps, however, were stopped by the sudden appearance of a small white orb between the four of them. Joey and Tristan brought themselves to their feet and walked around to Pharaoh and Téa's sides as the orb slowly expanded into a ring of pure white light. In the center of it was the scene of yet another forest, this one filled with blooming cherry blossom trees.

"Another area of this land," Pharaoh murmured as he stared through the newfound opening.

"Oh, great. There's even more of this crazy place to explore," Tristan groaned.

"Hey, wait-if _this _place had an entire house made a sweets, den maybe de next part's gonna be an entire forest a dem!" Joey grinned with sheer delight at the thought. "We could have de huge feedin' frenzy widdout de whole get-eaten-by-a-witch part!"

Tristan's eyes widened with realization. "Heeey, you're right!"

The two quickly darted through the portal, the image wavering as they stepped through the entrance. "Food fest, here we come!!" they cheered as they vanished in the midst of the pink and white woods.

Pharaoh and Téa exchanged looks with one another before they followed the two gluttons through the newfound entryway.


	9. Chapter Eight: Wolf in Bro's Clothing

Chapter Eight: Wolf in Bro's Clothing

"This is ridiculous," Kaiba snarled as he shoved a pink-and-white-flowered branch out of his way with his free hand. He and Mokuba had been travelling for what seemed like an eternity through a sea of delicate petals and rough tree bark, and yet they hadn't come across any sort of separate exit from this mysterious place whatsoever. "Whoever brought us here is completely wasting our time."

Kaiba was so focused on the path before him that he didn't notice his little brother roll his eyes at the comment. _Does this human ever do anything but complain? Geez, I'm not really sure if I'd enjoy such a sour meal…_

His eyes flashed with a glint of yellow once more. _Then again, it's not as though I have an extensive menu to choose from…when you live in these secluded woods, you take whatever people you can get…_He licked his lips as he looked up and down Kaiba's sleeveless red trenchcoat. _Especially red-clothed ones…I've always had a big taste for them, for some reason._

"What sort of place is this, anyway?" Kaiba continued. He paused and opened his palm out before him, allowing a few of the small, fluttering petals to drop into his cupped hand. "If someone wanted to torment us, they might have chosen something a little more along the lines of fearful," he dropped the petals to the ground in disgust.

_Ugh, enough of this complaining already! _Mokuba gnashed his teeth together. He took in a deep breath and spoke in as calm a voice as he could muster, "Seto, what if the fearful part of this world is hidden under all of this pretty scenery, just so that once we let our guard down it can come out and eat us or something?"

Kaiba glanced down at his brother in disbelief. "Mokuba, exactly what do you imagine here that could scare somebody?"

"I dunno…bears, bees…maybe a wolf?" He spoke the last three words in a bit of a rush.

"A wolf." Kaiba glanced down at his died jacket and pulled at its collar. "So is that supposed to make me, what's her name…"

"Red Riding Hood!" Mokuba burst out in exasperation. _How in the world can any kid not be aware of every detail in that fairy tale? It's a classic, for crying out loud!_

Kaiba was a bit taken aback by his little brother's sudden outburst, but he simply put it down to his brother feeling as annoyed as he did about being stuck in these woods. When he regained his composure, he conceded, "Right, that was it."

He turned and continued down the path with a noise of disgust, his brother just a little bit behind him. "What a ridiculous story; only someone who's completely blind would be oblivious to the fact that their grandmother has been replaced with a grey, dog-like creature in her clothing!" He raised his voice up to a higher, mocking tone: "Oh, what big eyes you have!"

Mokuba gave a small, devilish grin. "All the better to see you with," he whispered with glee. The yellow gleam flashed once more in his dark eyes.

"Oh, what big ears you have!"

"All the better to hear you with." Mokuba couldn't help but rub his hands together and lick his lips.

"And her last line is my personal favorite," Kaiba rolled his eyes, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Oh, what big teeth you have!"

_That's my cue_. "All the better to EAT YOU WITH!"

Kaiba whipped around at the sound of his brother's screaming. His eyes widened with shock when he saw that his little brother's eyes had turned a shining, distinct shade of yellow, looking at him extremely hungrily. When he grinned, he revealed a mouth filled with sharp, pointed teeth able to rip through just about anything they bit.

When he finally snapped out of his initial shock and disgust, he screamed at the creature, _"Where's my brother, you freak?!"_

"Currently being digested," the thing grinned nastily as he began to grow in height and muscle. Grey tufts of fur started to burst out all over his body, ripping his clothing into shreds that fluttered to the ground. Shining claws came forth from the tips of his fingers and toes before he slammed down onto all fours, his neck craning forward with a sickening crick to reveal a snout grown forth on his face and pointed ears atop his head. "But don't worry," the wolf growled in a low, guttural voice, "he was the appetizer, and you'll see him once more by being my main course!"

"Not if I can help it," Kaiba snarled. He pulled one hand back and flung it out towards the creature.

A few little sparks of white lightning burst forth from his palm, sputtering and dissipating into the air almost the instant after they appeared.

Kaiba raised his palm towards his face and stared at it in horror. "What the-"

The wolf's maniacal laughter made him look back up. "You foolish human. Those who become parts of fairy tales in this world aren't able to use their powers; it simply wouldn't befit their characters!"

He opened his mouth wide, little streams of drool dripping down his pointed teeth, and crouched down in preparation to pounce. "Now, then-FEEDING TIME!"

The large beast leapt into the air with a howl, stretching its mouth open as wide as it possibly could as it came down towards the C.E.O.

Kaiba, however, wasn't about to be defeated that easily. Gripping firmly onto its handle, he swung his briefcase into the air above his head, its metal body crashing directly into the wolf's open snout.

The beast remained crushed up against the briefcase for a few moments, its body frozen with the shock of the pain in midair and tail pointing straight up towards the sky. It fell to the ground in what seemed like slow motion and simply laid there once it hit the earth, its yellow eyes glazed over with daze and tongue lopping out one side of its mouth.

As Kaiba lowered the briefcase, the distinct sound of twigs snapping and the crushing of underbrush made him whip around, fully prepared for yet another attack.

When he saw the four members of the 'geek squad' step out from amongst the pink and white trees, however, he almost immediately relaxed and his facial expression changed from anger to disgust. "Oh, great-you're here," he muttered.

"Aw, great," Joey groaned when he saw the blue-eyed young man. "We come here hopin' for some sweets, an instead we hafta find de ultimate sourball."

"Humph!" Kaiba ignored Joey's comment for the moment and turned his attentions back to the wolf, snapping over his shoulder, "As long as you're here, hold this vile creature down while I try to make it empty the contents of its stomach."

The four could only stare at him in response to his bizarre comment. Joey was the one who finally expressed the confusion they all felt: "HUH?!"

"THE THING ATE MOKUBA!" Kaiba snarled as he knelt down by the side of the semiconscious beast, placing his briefcase by his side. "I don't care how it has to be done, I'm just going to get this sick creature to throw up if it's the last thing I do!!"

He clenched one hand into a fist and pulled it back, aiming the blow directly for the beast's stomach.

The wolf blinked at that moment, the glazed cover fading from its eyes. When the creature saw Kaiba kneeling by its side, it grinned a toothy grin and let out a hushed growl of triumph.

In one lightning fast movement, the wolf turned and jumped right back onto all fours, knocking Kaiba backwards as its large snout shoved against his body.

He sat up just in time to see the wolf's open mouth heading straight towards him, its pointed teeth aligning the dark void of an entryway to its stomach.

The four teens quickly shut their eyes and cringed in disgust and horror. They forced back the gags rising to their throats as the sounds of fading screams of terrible pain and sickening crunches of bones reached their ears.

When the terrible noises finally ceased, replaced with a far less sickening sound of a growl of satisfaction, the four slowly slid their eyes open. Only the wolf stood before them, licking the crimson stains off of its teeth. Lying by its feet was the silver briefcase, the clear impression of a snout pressed into its metal side, and a few completely shredded pieces of red cloth.

"Deee-licious," the wolf smacked its lips.

"More like deees-gusting," Joey muttered.

When the wolf finished licking all of the blood off its glistening fangs, it focused its gaze on the four heroes, its eyes flashing with a yellowish gleam. They slowly took a step backwards as it grinned nastily, little drops of drool seeping out of its mouth.

"Now that I've finished with the annoying red-cloak, I do believe I'd like to have some dessert," it growled in a garbled voice.

"Why are all a de nutty tings here convinced that we taste good, for some reason??" Joey hissed to the others.

"Beats me; considering how often you shower, you'd probably taste like dirt," Tristan whispered back.

While the two got caught up in yet another escalating argument, the wolf slowly moving in on them, the gleam of something against a cherry blossom tree caught Pharaoh's eye. He innocuously glanced in the light's direction and saw an axe leaning against its wooden trunk, the sharpened blade of its silver head glittering under a ray of sunlight.

An idea slowly formed in his mind. _Perhaps if they have yet to be digested, then…but I need to obtain that weapon first…_

He quietly murmured to Téa, "I believe I know of a way to defeat the beast and set Kaiba and Mokuba free. I simply need you guys to distract it for a few moments."

"Of course," Téa nodded.

She stepped up towards the wolf and, clenching her hands into fists by her side, snapped, "What kind of sick freak of nature are you?! How can you just swallow a person practically whole??"

Joey and Tristan had been about to lunge at one another, arms stretched out and fingers flexing to grab onto a throat, but they stopped and turned their heads towards Téa upon hearing her outburst. They stared at her in complete shock and confusion for a few moments, but as she continued with her nonstop raving, they figured perhaps they should accompany her.

"What you just did was really disgusting, you know that?" Tristan lowered his arms and stepped forward to Téa's side.

"Are you completely nuts?" Joey moved to her other side, putting an extremely livid look onto his face. "You just swallowed a human bein' 'cause you were hungry, like some kinda animal!!"

From before them, Pharaoh could hear the sound of the wolf letting out a gruff laugh at their cries of anger, clearly unaffected by any comments they shot towards him. With the three standing side-by-side, the wolf's view of him was completely blocked.

Pharaoh smiled. _Excellent, you guys,_ he cheered them on. _Just a little bit more…_

He quietly but quickly stepped towards the cherry blossom tree, grabbing the axe firmly with both hands by its wooden handle. He swung it over his shoulder, the blade glistening just inches away from his ear.

"ENOUGH!" the wolf finally screamed out, sick of hearing so much ranting and raving from humans in one day. The three teenagers almost immediately fell silent. "Are you thinking that you'll be able to annoy me so much that I'll simply leave? If so, then you're sadly mistaken."

It bore its pointed fangs at them, licking them dry of the drool of hunger. "Especially since the longer I wait, THE HUNGRIER I GET!"

Pharaoh quickly rose the axe above his head as his friends stepped back, indicating that the beast was about to strike. When the wolf appeared in the air above their heads, mouth open wide in a howl of anger, they quickly turned on their heels and ran.

He stepped forward to the spot they had been in, the blade of the axe glistening above his head. The wolf saw the gleam of the weapon against the sunlight, but it was stuck in mid-leap and could do nothing but widen its yellow eyes in horror as it came nearer and nearer the boy with the axe.

The three teenagers hadn't gotten very far in their dash when they heard the high-pitched howl of the wolf reverberate throughout the cherry blossom woods. The haunting cry of sheer pain paralyzed them to the core, sounding like the banshee's wail of death.

When they finally regained control of themselves, the three turned around to behold the sight behind them. They saw Pharaoh standing in the space where they'd been, glaring down at what appeared to be the mere shadowy silhouette of a wolf sliced into two on the ground before him. The axe he gripped in one hand was now covered with a black, dripping substance similar to that of the wolf.

The shadowy wolf slowly lifted its head and let out one tiny whine of pain before it collapsed back to the ground, defeated in entirety.

As its miniscule cry faded away, the two shadowy parts of the wolf began shifting into different forms, transforming into the dark shapes of what appeared to be two human beings, one tall and one short, sprawled out on the ground. The dark shadows lifted from around the figures once fully formed and slowly dissipated into the air above them, revealing the two to be Kaiba and Mokuba.

Kaiba awoke to the feeling of a cool breeze flowing across his face. He recalled being swallowed up by the sick beast that had dared to eat his brother, feelings of horrific pain shooting through his arms and legs as sharp fangs sank deeply into his flesh…then everything had gone black.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring up into the four faces of the nerd patrol. Behind them he could see the slightly blurred pink-and-white cherry blossoms atop their wooden perches, so at least he knew they hadn't been stupid enough to get swallowed up as well.

"You certainly took your sweet time," he narrowed his eyes at them as he brought himself to a sitting position.

"How de heck would you know?! You were chewed inta bits!" Joey cried.

"We should've just let the wolf digest him," Tristan muttered.

Kaiba was about to fire some more insults at the idiots when he heard the sound of someone groaning by his side. When he turned and saw the noise's source, all of his annoyance became instantly replaced with something quite close to happiness.

"Mokuba!" he smiled.

His little brother's eyelids fluttered open at the sound of the faintly familiar voice. When his eyes glanced up into the gleaming blue orbs he knew so well, he immediately sat up and flung his arms around their owner's neck. "Seto!"

Kaiba tightly wrapped his arms around his little brother, holding on as though letting go would mean he'd lose him again. The others simply smiled and remained silent so that the two could fully savor their reunion without interruption.

When they finally pulled away from one another, Mokuba murmured, "Seto, what happened? All I can remember is suddenly stepping into a forest of cherry blossom trees, and then there was a wolf jumping at me with its mouth wide open…and then I kind of blanked out…"

"Don't dwell on it at the moment, Mokuba," Kaiba smiled, brushing some of his little brother's hair out of his face. "It's over now."

The instant after he spoke, a small, luminescent orb materialized between the brothers and the four heroes. Mokuba was startled by the orb's sudden appearance and hid his face in his brother's chest, who in return stroked his dark hair reassuringly.

"There's no need to worry; it's just a portal," Pharaoh assured Mokuba as the orb expanded once more into the doorway's gleaming outline.

The little one glanced up to see the entryway in its entirety hovering in midair, its center filled with the image of an autumnal forest alit by the beams of the golden harvest moon.

"Where's that supposed to be?" he asked, pulling away from Kaiba and walking around to see the portal from the heroes' perspective. "It doesn't look like anywhere in Domino."

"It's not," Pharaoh explained. "It's another part of this world, wherever it is. The rest of our team must be here as well…"

"Oh, great," Kaiba muttered as he followed Mokuba around the portal. "So we still have more of this insanity to go through?"

"There shouldn't be much more that we have to do," Pharaoh ignored the nastiness of his comment, "it should only perhaps be three more places to go to."

"Humph. Let's go, then," Kaiba snarled. "The sooner we get through this, the better. C'mon, Mokuba."

The two Kaiba brothers stepped through the doorway, its image slightly wavering as they passed through it.

"Why couldn't we 'ave found Mr. Sunshine _after _savin' everybody else?" Joey groaned.

"Come on everyone; Kaiba's correct, in a way. The sooner we save everyone, the better off they will most likely be," Pharaoh insisted.

The other three nodded in agreement, though Joey did so with a bit of a sulk on his face. He maintained the look as the four stepped through the portal, its image rippling like water with their entrance.


	10. Chapter Nine: Midnight Run

Chapter Nine: Midnight Run

Bakura's heart pounded as he continued riding through the scarlet and gold woods, its pulse ringing in his ears and almost drowning out the hurried hoof beats behind him. He'd been caught up in the terrifying game of cat and mouse with the headless horseman for what seemed like an eternity, and yet every time he stole a glance over his shoulder, the rider in black was still there, its orange gourd giving him a sinister smirk.

_What exactly does this spirit want from me?_ he cried in his mind. He couldn't sense that it was a spirit, for some odd reason, but intuition told him that was what the black-cloaked rider was. After all, how else could he survive with a mere pumpkin for a head?

He was snapped out of his thoughts by his horse suddenly stopping in the middle of the woods and rearing up on its hind legs, letting out a whinny of horror. He quickly tightened his grip on the reins and planted his seat more firmly into the saddle to stop himself from sliding off the horse's back.

"Whoa! Settle down, boy, settle down!" he cried out, pulling up on the reins to try to regain control of the spooked stallion.

After a few moments, the horse finally planted its front hooves back onto the ground, settled by its master's insistence on calming down. Bakura peered around its head to try and see what exactly had frightened it so much.

To his surprise, a portal surrounded by a soft white outline had appeared directly in their path, out of which stepped six of his comrades in crime-fighting. Never had he been so relieved to see them; he'd been a bit confused as to why they were there for a few seconds, but after so much of the unexpected happening to all of them for some time, he figured it was best to simply go along with it.

"Bakura!" Pharaoh cried when he saw the head of white hair peering around the head of the snowy stallion.

"So you got sucked inta dis cruddy world too, huh?" Joey commented.

"Apparently yes," Bakura nodded. "Forgive me for simply brushing all of you off at the moment, but I must continue moving or else…"

His voice trailed off as the clip-clop of horse's hooves reached their ears, approaching nearer and nearer with every passing second. In a panic from the mysterious rider's nearing, Bakura used his feet to smack at the horse's sides. The stallion reared up onto its hind legs, sending the others dashing to the sides of it from fear of being hit or trampled, and took off in a fast gallop. Bakura's scream from its sudden rush of speed faded away as the horse and rider disappeared into the darkness of the woods.

A few moments later, Bakura's pursuer appeared, galloping at full speed past the spot where they'd been standing. Although the rider went by so quickly that they only caught a mere glimpse of him, they could just distinguish a blur of a round, orange-colored object perched atop a black-shrouded figure and his stallion.

"What de heck was dat?!" Joey cried out as the six stepped back to their former position, staring into the dark void where Bakura and the second rider had vanished.

"Am I losing my mind, or did that last guy have some big pumpkin for a head?" Tristan asked.

"This sounds familiar…" Téa's gaze became unfocused as she went deeply into her thoughts, feeling around for the memory which had been faintly stirred in her mind. "A horseman with only a pumpkin for a head…where did I hear about that before…?"

She was snapped out of her deep thinking by the sound of Pharaoh's commanding voice: "Everyone, we must follow Bakura and his chaser immediately; I sense that our friend is in grave danger…"

Without question, the six started running after Bakura and the headless horseman. Mokuba reached out and grabbed onto his brother's hand to keep up with them.

The six dashed through the sea of red, gold, and mottled brown, moving in and out of the rays of moonlight shining between the bundles of leaves and ducking underneath the low, thick branches on the towering trees. Since Bakura and his pursuer already had quite a head start, it seemed to take an eternity of running through the woods before the sound of hoof beats even reached their ears.

Finally, the very back of Bakura's pursuer came into their view, their thick cloak flowing out behind them like a rippling dark sea. Under the harvest moon light, they could see that the rider's head was indeed a bright orange gourd capped with a thick green stump peeking out of the top.

"Why would somebody be ridin' around wit dat big orange veggie over deir head?" Joey cried aloud.

"Maybe they've got an even uglier mug than you do," Tristan suggested.

"I DARE YA TA SAY DAT AGAIN, YA JERK!"

As they shot retorts back and forth at one another, the horseman apparently became tired of the bickering behind him or her. They pulled at the reigns of their black stallion with their bony hands, bringing it to a halt with a screeching whinny.

The six quickly slid to a stop on the ground beneath their feet in the shock of the horse's sudden freeze. They slowly stepped back as the headless horseman pulled on the horse's reigns, turning it around to face them directly.

Téa sucked in a breath of horror as the six stared up at the horse rider's head. Although on any normal jack o' lantern it wouldn't have been scary at all, the black void inside of the carved-out triangular eyes, little nose and toothy grin which revealed absolutely no other head inside whatsoever was quite a bit freaky.

"Dat guy's not really alive, is he," Joey murmured under his breath.

"No, Joey, apparently not," Pharaoh replied.

Téa couldn't help but continuously stare into the geometric voids of eyes, unable to pull her gaze away from its ghastly face. _I know you from somewhere…_she thought. _Come on now, where are you from…?_

* * *

Bakura was still galloping deeper and deeper into the woods when he suddenly realized that the sounds of hoof beats behind him had ceased in entirety. He pulled up on his horse's reins, bringing it to a screeching halt that kicked up little grey dust clouds around its hooves.

He slowly used the reins to maneuver the horse around. Behind him was only the sight of a shadowy abyss in between the archways of the red and gold adorned tree's branches, with no sign of a flash of orange in the midst of the darkness.

He heaved a loud sigh of relief. "Oh, thank god…I finally lost him…"

His happiness, though, slowly waned when he didn't see his friends emerge from the darkness either. "Where could they have…"

The sound of his steadily beating heart began ringing in his ears again. "Oh, no…the horseman didn't…"

Before he even let himself finish, he kicked against the horse's sides again, sending it tearing once more back from whence it came.

* * *

The six teenagers slowly stepped back as the dark stallion and its black-cloaked rider stepped up towards them. Mokuba slipped behind his brother and only dared to peek around at the headless horseman a little, shaking so much that Kaiba clearly felt his hand quivering like a leaf.

"Why doncha get de heck away from us, ya headless freak?" Joey cried up to the pumpkin of the head.

"Yes, Wheeler, insult him; that will most certainly get him to leave," Kaiba rolled his eyes.

"Oh, an I'm sure your brilliant highness has de perfect solution for gettin' rid of a headless horseman?!" Joey snapped back.

"THAT'S IT!"

Everyone jumped at Téa's sudden outburst of realization. Pharaoh turned towards her and asked, "What is it?"

"Now I know what story this is!" Téa almost jumped up and down, hands clasped together with delight. "In junior high, all of us had to do reports in social studies on folktales from different countries, remember? My particular country was Germany, and this reminds me of one of its stories about a headless horseman!" She paused. "Although this is actually reminds me more of its American version, where it's called 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow…'"

"What do you remember about it?" Pharaoh pressed her. "Is there anything in particular about how to defeat the horseman?"

"Uh, I don't tink dis is de best time ta explain dat!" Joey pointed up at the black-clad headless horseman, still advancing towards them, whose opal eyes of its midnight-colored stallion now fixated with a nasty glare on the pretty brunette.

Pharaoh almost immediately moved in front of Téa and spread his arms out wide in a protective manner before her. "Don't you dare harm her in any manner!" he snapped at the headless horseman, eyes narrowed up towards the two black triangles in a livid glare.

For a moment, he swore that the pumpkin's mouth tightened its toothy grin, as though it found some sort of perverse pleasure in preparing to destroy both its possible source of demise and her defender.

The horseman reached up its bony hands towards its pumpkin head. As it lifted its arms up, the folds of its cloak around them slipped down, and Téa had to smother a gasp when they revealed completely bare, ivory-white radii and ulnae devoid of any sign of flesh or muscle.

They pressed their arms up against their gourd of a head and pulled it right off its neck with a pop, revealing simply a bare stump where an actual cranium would have been. Grasping it firmly in both hands, the headless horseman reached back in preparation to hurl it directly at Téa and Pharaoh, more than ready to whack them with the heavy orange object.

"YOU FOOL!"

The six heroes glanced beyond the headless horseman in the voice's direction, with Mokuba just barely peeking one eye around his brother's coat, and saw that Bakura had unexpectedly come straight back to the one who had been pursuing him. His eyes were filled with a clear determination aimed directly at the black-clad rider, more than ready to start up the chase once more for his friends' sakes.

The horseman turned his jack o' lantern head around so that its face was now pointed in Bakura's direction. Once he'd ascertained he'd gotten the horseman's attention, Bakura snarled at him, "Aren't you forgetting that it's supposed to be me you're attempting to destroy? Why don't you return to the chase and try to defeat me once more?"

He pulled up on the reins and turned the horse back around to face the opposite direction. He glanced slyly over his shoulder and mocked the rider, "Besides, it's quite interesting that I'm being pursued by a horse with two rear ends."

The corners of the pumpkin's mouth shot downwards. Its triangular eyes narrowed downwards into angry slits. It quickly turned its head around, smacked it back down onto its neck, and grabbed back onto its horse's reins to turn it around.

Bakura kicked his feet against his white stallion's sides, sending it rearing up onto its hind legs before it took off at a full gallop into the autumnal forest once more. The headless horseman yanked up on its horse's reins and rode at top speed after Bakura, snapping the branches it rode into right off the trees and onto the ground with a crunch of their deceased leaves.

The six waited for a few moments before they took off again after Bakura and his pursuer, wanting to ensure that Téa could speak freely for a time about all she knew of the headless horseman.

"Now, Téa, as I was saying, do you know anything about possibly being able to defeat the headless horseman?" Pharaoh continued.

"Hang on; I'm trying to think my way through the story…" Téa's face took on a thoughtful appearance, her eyes slightly becoming unfocused as they turned towards her mind. Pharaoh grabbed onto her hand and helped guide her through the woods so that she could think freely without the interruption of branches and trees in her way.

Realization slowly dawned in Téa's eyes as the trickle of faint memories started to run faster and faster into her mind. "I remember…in both the classic and old versions of the story, if you were being chased by the headless horseman, then there was only supposed to be one way to defeat him…you had to make it across an old bridge somewhere in the midst of his haunting grounds..."

"A bridge?" Disbelief was registered all over Joey's face. "Why de heck would a bridge be able ta stop a spook?"

"It was part of old beliefs about ghosts," she explained. "Supposedly they weren't able to cross over water."

"Who in the world has the time to come up with these notions about stuff of fairy tales?!" Kaiba cried.

"Whoever they are, they've most likely given us the solution to our problem with this horseman," Pharaoh replied. He focused his gaze into the darkness flecked with rays of moonlight before them. "Bakura, hang in there…I'm certain there must be water around somewhere within these woods…"

* * *

Bakura's sweaty palms started to slip from the reins as he rode through the woods, the headless horseman directly on his tail. He took one quick moment to rub his hands against his grey jacket and dry them off a bit before he grabbed back onto the reins.

_When is this going to end already? _he thought in exasperation. _This poor horse can't keep running for all eternity…_

Indeed, the white stallion's hooves were slowing their steady galloping beat, and its long pink tongue flopped around out of the corner of its mouth as its breathing became heavy and deep. The headless horseman's stallion, on the other hand, didn't look the least bit tired, having the advantage of not actually being alive.

Bakura silently pleaded for his own horse to keep up its pace as the clip-clop sound behind him became louder and louder, coming closer to him every second. Just underneath the hoof beats, he could also just distinguish a soft, rushing sort of noise, this one approaching him from the front.

He looked up and squinted into the darkness before him, trying to distinguish what was making the quiet whoosh before him. Just ahead, he could see a bridge of wooden planks held up with frayed ropes above a flowing stream of cool, crystal clear water whose liquid sparkled under the light of the moon.

"Bakura!"

He glanced over his shoulder and saw his six comrades had caught up with him and his decapitated pursuer, staying behind the black-clad rider just at a short distance behind the flying end of its dark stallion's tail.

"You must find some water to cross over!" Pharaoh called up to the white-haired man. "The horseman shouldn't be able to follow you once you've gotten over it!"

_Water? _Bakura became very confused. _In my time as a medium I've never heard of ghosts being unable to cross over water…perhaps I have some more that I need to learn about them…_

He didn't think this was the proper time to question it, however, especially since he was getting closer and closer to a flowing stream of water. If he now had a chance to finally get the horseman off his tail, this was the time to take it.

He leaned down close to his horse's ear and murmured gently to it: "Just a little bit more, boy, just a little bit more…"

His heart pounded faster and faster with a mixture of fear and excitement as his white stallion came nearer and nearer to the wooden bridge, the rush of the stream underneath slowly beginning to drown out the horseman's hooves. He was going to make it, he was going to-

"BAKURA, LOOK OUT!"

He glanced over his shoulder once more, just a few hoof beats away from the bridge, and saw that the headless horseman had pulled its jack o' lantern of a head right off its stump of a neck and now clutched it firmly in both hands, pressing his legs tightly against the side of his own stallion to ascertain that he wouldn't fall from its back. It had apparently seen the bridge before Bakura, and wanted to ascertain it could still defeat him before his chance to do so was gone.

Bakura let out a gasp of horror as the headless horseman lifted his hands over his head and flung the pumpkin through the air. The orange gourd flew directly past the golden harvest moon and straight towards Bakura's skull, ready to crack it wide open once it made contact.

He crouched down as low as he could while his horse galloped over the wooden bridge, the planks letting out protesting creaks as the weight of horse and rider seriously tested what remained of their strength. Once they'd gotten to the other side, the white stallion finally collapsed onto its knees, hitting the earth with a heavy thump.

Bakura barely even moved from the horse's hard fall; his grip on the reins had become iron-like with his fear. His chest heaved up and down with deep, heavy breaths of horror as he braced himself for the fatal blow.

A sickening noise of hard shell smashing tore through the air, followed almost immediately by the splatter of thick, orange pulp onto the ground. The six heroes behind the headless horseman gasped at the terrifying sound, unable to see around the dark spirit's flowing cloak and its horse's rear where exactly it had hit.

In its rush to attempt to strike a blow on Bakura, the headless horseman had let go of its stallion's reins, allowing it to freely gallop on straight towards the bridge. The moment its hooves touched the first wooden plank, the horse froze in its spot and started letting out a whinny of horror. The horseman himself started waving its hands around wildly for the horse's reins to pull it back from the creaky bridge, but without its head, it was completely blind to its surroundings and could only grasp at air.

The six watched as a thick haze of black smoke enshrouded the horse and rider, remaining completely untouched even by the rays of moonlight shining down on it. As the wisps swirled around the headless horseman in a sort of shadowy dance, the horse's whinnies started to fade into soft echoes, as though it was getting further and further away.

When the smoky clouds dispersed, the headless horseman was gone. At last, the teens could see quite clearly beyond where he'd been.

Pharaoh, Joey, Tristan and Téa heaved a collective sigh of relief. Mokuba peered around his brother's back to peek at their source of ease.

The horseman's throw hadn't been hard enough. The smashed pieces of the pumpkin were lying in the middle of the bridge, with stringy pulp oozing out from beneath the shell's remnants and dripping slowly into the rushing water. Bakura was crouched towards the ground on the other side, still clutching fiercely at the reins despite the fact that his horse had vanished.

He finally found the strength to open his eyes after a few minutes with no feeling of a blow on the back of his head. Upon realizing that his horse had disappeared, he lowered his hands from the invisible reins and brought himself up to a sitting position.

If his horse was no longer here, then it was probably no longer needed. And if that was the case, then…

Bakura took a hesitant but hopeful glance over his shoulder. He finally began to relax when he saw his friends creaking their way across the bridge, carefully side-stepping the smashed pumpkin remnants littering its wooden planks. The horseman had to be gone.

He brought himself to his feet and turned to face them, a grin spreading widely across his face. "Thank heavens that's over…" he murmured, his breath still a bit restrained from the terrifying ordeal. "I honestly believed I was going to die from being struck by a vegetable."

"Like we'd ever let cha die from sometin' dat stupid, man," Joey laughed.

"Right, of course," Bakura smiled.

Another orb of shimmering white light appeared by their sides in the midst of the darkened forest. The seven heroes watched as it once more expanded into a portal surrounded by a luminescent aura, within which was the image of a grove filled with lush green olive trees.

"Dis had bedder be de last place we hafta go to in dis crazy world," Joey exclaimed.

"I think all of us are hopeful for that," Pharaoh commented. "Come on, let's go."

The seven made their way one by one through the doorway, its image wavering like ripples in a pond as they entered.


	11. Chapter Ten: Wash it Off

Chapter Ten: Wash it Off

When the seven stepped through the portal and into the beautiful grove of olive trees, the glitter of gold between the clusters of oblong leaves and round, ripe olives was unmistakable, especially when struck by the shining rays of sunlight. As they stepped through the clusters of fertile, living trees, the shine of the glittering gold ones became brighter and brighter to the point of near blindness.

It took quite a bit of careful maneuvering down and around the sharp, unbreakable twigs of gold in their attempt to find whatever lay beyond the trees. Some of the razor-like leaves were unavoidable, though.

"OUCH!" Joey yelped in shock as he pulled his hand away from a thin branch which he'd absentmindedly swatted at. He turned it over and saw a tiny gash forming in the middle of his palm. "Geez, where de heck did all a dese trees come from?!"

Téa stared up at the twisted, gnarled trees rather sadly. "It's strange…" she murmured, "the gold is beautiful, but…" She glanced back towards the towering verdure they'd just stepped through. "If these were once real trees, then…now they've become really…lifeless…"

Finally, after the seven stepped over a flowing stream twisting all around the gold trees, they arrived in the midst of a clearing adorned with a Grecian temple, also made entirely out of the precious metal. Some clusters of the grass in the clearing had been turned to gold as well, while others remained part of the fertile greenery.

Standing by the final, untouched tree closest to the clearing was Spencer and Yuri, the former reaching out towards a tiny branch sticking out near the bottom of its trunk while the latter pulled desperately on his outstretched arm.

"Spencer, stop this!" Yuri was screaming angrily right into Spencer's ear. "Don't you realize that you've been afflicted by an immortal with a gold touch and a fever to go with it?! You've got to snap out of it!"

"Shut up!" Spencer jabbed his elbow straight into Yuri's chest, sending him down onto the green and gold earth. The young one glanced up into his terrifying golden eyes and could only listen in shock as he said: "Don't you dare try to distract me while I'm creating my fortune!"

With that, he looked back towards the lush olive tree and touched the tip of the branch he'd been aiming for. Almost immediately it became shrouded in a glimmering gold aura and transformed into the same shining material the trees around it were made of, blending in perfectly with the scenery. The seven couldn't help but back up one step as Spencer threw back his head and let out a crazed, almost maniacal laugh at the sight of the gold.

Yuri slowly brought himself back to his feet. It was almost unbearable to look at his former father. No, this wasn't his former father; he was certainly not this crazed, wealth-hungry man.

_My stars, he's in this far too deep…_For the first time since he'd regained his powers, he felt completely helpless. _How in the world am I going to snap him out of this…?_

"Grandpa!"

Like an answer to a prayer, the voice of his grandchild's alter-ego rung in his ears. He snuck a hopeful glance behind him and saw, indeed, he and all of his friends were standing by the edge of the clearing. They'd arrived almost like magic.

"Oh, thank God!" Yuri hurried to the group of seven. "I really need some help here; Spencer has apparently been afflicted with some sort of gold fever thanks to a divinity who cast a spell upon him, and I've been trying to snap him out of it with reminders of why exactly we were supposed to come here, how some queen could possibly be harming all of you at the moment, how-"

"Wait one moment!" Pharaoh held up one hand to cease his meandering. "You know of where we are and who has brought us here?"

"Ye-es, we have a sense of the who and where in all of this, but Spencer could possibly have more information which he didn't get the chance to tell me." He looked back at the king, now kneeling down to the ground and touching every last little blade of grass which he had yet to turn to gold. "Now it's unlikely that we'll ever find out what he knows…"

"Grandpa, calm down," Pharaoh placed his hands reassuringly onto the youth's shoulders. "I realize that Spencer's situation appears bad at the moment, but we, too, have just gone through what seemed like inescapable ordeals, and we've managed to get through them with all that we have." He smiled wanly. "Come now, you said that a divinity gave Spencer the golden illness, correct? Do you have any idea which one it was?"

"Hmm…" Yuri frowned as he focused his thoughts on the god who'd made his father go insane. "He wasn't one of the Egyptian gods, I'm quite certain of that…though my knowledge of them isn't as extensive as them, I believe he was Greek…gold hair, leopard pelt, pinecone-tipped staff…which one is that…?"

"Perhaps it would help to recall which story this is as well," Pharaoh suggested. "Thus far, I believe all of the various situations we've been in have been based upon various fairy tales and folklore of long ago, so perhaps this one is of Greek mythology. Do you recall any of their myths, by chance, involving one with a golden touch?"

The moment he said the last two words, Yuri's violet eyes lit up with realization. "That's it! Now I recall; this is the popular myth of the golden touch!"

He excitedly started letting the story flow out of his mouth more and more quickly as it came back to his mind. "There was a Greek king by the name of Midas who received the golden touch from the god called Pan-yes, that's definitely who that was-as a reward for saving his teacher. The man was already afflicted with a gold fever, and once he received the golden touch, it became even worse. He started transforming almost everything in sight into the substance."

"Wait a sec…if he turned _everyting _dat he touched inta gold, how de heck could he eat anyting?" Joey asked.

"He couldn't," Yuri smiled. "That was one of the reasons why he got Pan to give him a way to get rid of the 'gift'; it was becoming far more of a curse."

"Um, I don't think that's the way we're going to get him to give it up." Tristan stared pointedly at Spencer, who kept letting out laughs of sheer delight with each piece of verdure that turned to gold with a mere tap of his finger. "He doesn't look the least bit hungry right now."

"No, but there must be something else…" Pharaoh replied. "Something which, if Spencer turned it to gold, would force him to realize his new 'gift' is a curse that he needs to rid himself of…but what would that be?"

He and Yuri focused their thoughts on the means to Spencer's end of his affliction for a little while, trying to figure out what could possibly cure him of it, while the rest simply stared and watched as he turned in a circle around his spot and kept tapping more and more blades of grass, transforming them from green to gold with a hysterical giggle.

Slowly, Yuri's eyes widened with a slightly perturbed look, and the corners of his mouth curled down into a frown. He'd just figured out a possible solution, but…could he really bring himself to go through with it?

Pharaoh noticed the change in his countenance and asked, "Do you know of a way which we could finally bring Spencer to his senses?"

Yuri considered the thought which had crossed his mind for a few more moments. Finally, he took in a deep breath and replied, "Yes, I do. And when he does so, tell him to simply remember the river Pactolus. Therein is the cure."

With a determined look in his eyes, he spun around and marched straight back towards Spencer, undeterred in any way by his crazed cackles of joy. When he reached Spencer, he folded his arms and snapped, "Spencer, listen to me."

Spencer rolled his eyes at the sound of the annoying kid's voice. He turned around and said with clear exasperation in his voice, "What do you want now?"

"So is this really all that you care about now? Gold, gold, and nothing but gold?" Yuri spread his arms out to indicate the grove of golden olive trees before them.

"Maybe it is. What's it matter to you?" This kid was really getting on his nerves; couldn't he leave and let him get back to his gold-turning spree?

"Fine. If that's all that matters, then allow for me to add one more piece to your collection. I hope you enjoy it."

He suddenly reached out, grabbed Spencer's arm, and pressed it up against his chest. His aura became surrounded by a soft, golden glow, and in an instant his entire body had been transformed into the precious substance, his golden eyes locked in a nasty glare aimed directly at the king.

"Grandpa!" Pharaoh cried out in shock.

"Idiotic old man…" Kaiba muttered.

No one else could speak; they were far too dumbstruck by Yuri's action.

Spencer fixed his gaze upon the golden child before him, arm still stuck in the metallic grasp. Slowly, the gold shining through his eyes faded away as they widened in horror, and his breathing became quick bursts of heavy, gasping air filled with terror.

"By the gods…" he finally managed to get out. Little tears formed in the corners of his eyes, trickling down his cheeks and splattering onto his outstretched arm. "I…by the gods, what have I done…?"

He reached out with his other arm and wrapped it around his former child's neck, pressing the side of his face up against his cold, metallic chest and staining the gold with salty water. "Y…Yuri…I'm so sorry…"

The seven sadly watched and allowed him to let his tears flow, just to ascertain that he had truly come back to his senses. Finally, Pharaoh stepped forward and, as he approached, murmured, "We apologize, Spencer, but Grandpa believed this was the only way to relieve you of your insanity."

Spencer glanced up at him, eyes shining from the salty water spreading around them, and sobbed, "But…why the heck would he resort to this? I know there's a cure for the golden touch, but…" He hung his head in shame. "I can't remember it at the moment…not when he's…"

"Calm down, Spencer," Pharaoh insisted. "Yuri specifically instructed us to tell you something once you'd been relieved of your illness, and I'm quite certain it pertains to the cure. He said to remind you of the river Pactolus."

"Pactolus?" Spencer shut his eyes and tried to think through a mind clouded with anger and despair. "I know that name…" He absentmindedly reached up to tap his forehead in order to hurry his thoughts along, but he quickly stopped from fear of turning himself to gold by accident. "C'mon, Spencer, it's from some Greek myth you've heard before…"

"The myth of King Midas?" Pharaoh suggested.

Spencer's eyes snapped open and glanced up at Pharaoh in shock. "Yeah, that was it! But how did you…"

Before he could finish the question, the brush of his hand up against the gold of his former child's body, chilly to the touch, answered it for him. He glanced towards the statue, eyes locking with its defiant stare, and smiled wanly at it. "Your knowledge of ancient myths extends a little beyond those from Egypt, huh? Very impressive."

Spencer brought himself to his feet. "Now, then…" He glanced around the grove mixed with green, pointed blades of grass and sparkling gold olive trees, his gaze eventually falling upon the beautiful stream running under and around the roots and trunks of precious metal.

As he made his way to the flowing blue liquid, he murmured aloud his slowly returning recollection of the Greek myth. "King Midas' gift started out as a blessing, giving him all of the riches he desired…eventually, however, he found that it was becoming a nuisance, what with being unable to eat anything without it turning into the inedible substance…"

He stopped by the side of the water's bank. "Thus, Midas went over to Pan and asked him how he could get rid of the annoying gift…" He got down to his knees. "And his response was to wash his hands off in the river Pactolus, whose water would heal them of their given curse…"

He reached out and sank his arms into the water all the way up to their elbows. The liquid wrapped itself around his hands in a cool, healing touch, washing the disease which the Greek god had inflicted upon him away with the flow of the stream.

Once he felt he was cured, he pulled his hands out of the stream and flapped them a little, flicking droplets of water everywhere. "Let's see if this truly worked…" he murmured to himself.

He stood up and turned towards one of the golden olive trees. With a stretch into the air and some flexing of his fingers, he reached out before him and wrapped his hands around a low branch of the sparkling tree.

The tree became surrounded with a soft, hazy aura of an evergreen color. Every last bit of its gold slowly pulled away from the bark, leaves, and roots and flowed down its trunk to the ground like melted metal, leaving behind only rugged brown bark and the pure green of springtime foliage.

Téa smiled happily at the sight of the tree, restored to its former, living glory. "It's like it's been reborn…" she murmured to herself.

"Thank the gods…" Spencer pulled his hand away from the branch he clasped as its aura faded away and made his way towards the next golden olive tree with quick determination in his every step, arm stretched out to touch it and return it to its former state of greenery.

The seven watched as Spencer darted from one tree to another, tapping each one by its trunk or a branch, if it came within his reach. With each piece of the grove, he waited impatiently as the soft green aura surrounded it and the gold slid off of it, flowing deep into some unknown within the earth, and made his way towards the next one the moment he saw the aura start to wane. Once every last tree had been restored to lush, fertile verdure again, he quickly turned his attention to the ground beneath his feet and scanned the array of dark green blades for glitters of gold. The instant his eyes fell upon one golden piece of grass, he pounced upon it and tapped its very tip with his finger, also surrounding it with the magical aura that brought it back to its former state of living greenery.

Finally, not one tree statue of glistening gold remained. Life had been restored to the grove, even more beautiful with its dark green, oblong leaves, and round, black olives than in its previous, lifeless state of metal. All that remained of Spencer's gold fever was the statue of Yuri, stuck with a look of false anger and hands clutching fiercely onto an invisible arm.

The moment Spencer saw that only his former child remained in a golden state, he quickly went to the statue and smiled down into its defiant eyes. "_Lo siento_ that you had to sacrifice yourself in order to finally snap me to my senses. I greatly thank you for finding the strength to do so, though." He paused. "Although perhaps I should say so when I'm certain you can actually hear me."

He reached out and placed his hand onto the former prince's shoulder. Shining wisps of green surrounded his outline as the soft, healing touch flowed down into his body. Like the trees and blades of grass, the gold he'd become went sliding down in thick, flowing masses to the ground, leaving behind only the soft pink flesh and solid white bone of a living being.

When the gold had vanished into the earth and the greenish aura had dissipated into the air, at first Yuri could only blink twice, his eyes widening with evident shock. "What…oh!" He lowered his hands and glanced up at Spencer, the corners of his mouth turning upwards. "You finally got back to your senses, correct?"

"_Sí_, I did," Spencer smiled. "_Lo siento _for screaming at you before."

"There's no need to apologize," Yuri shook his head. "I understand it was your gold fever talking."

"Even so, I should have known better than to just let myself fall straight into the trap that whichever queen brought us here set up for me." He rose up one hand and clenched it into a tight fist. "And so help me gods, when I get my hands on her…"

"Excuse me, Spencer," Pharaoh stepped forward, "but who exactly is this queen you've been referring to?"

Spencer glanced towards him with wide eyes. "Wait-Grandpa didn't tell you?"

"I thought you were better suited for informing them of the situation," Yuri explained.

"Well, I'm flattered, then."

Spencer proceeded to give them a quick summary of the events believed to have occurred, as deduced by The Three of his dimension. The idea of an evil queen from a fairy tale realm having sent them away wasn't too insane or shocking for them to believe after all they'd been through as heroes; it was the idea that they were being watched without knowledge of it that sent a shiver or two down their spines.

"Dose guys were spyin' on us wit deir portal-machine ting??" Joey cried in disbelief.

"What makes them believe that they can watch over our every move like some sort of psychopathic dictatorship?" Kaiba snapped.

"They don't do it all the time," Spencer assured them, "they only do so when they want to see if any sort of calamitous event is going on in your world, which usually happens after a lull in your time as heroes. Besides, it's not like they've ever seen you guys doing anything _too_ interesting."

"Oh, well, that makes it so much better," Kaiba rolled his eyes.

"Spencer, were they absolutely certain that it was an evil queen who brought us here?" Téa questioned. "It doesn't really make sense to me; what would she gain from kicking us out of our own world?"

"I'm guessing, Téa, that perhaps she sent us out of our world so that she could establish herself within it," Pharaoh suggested. "If she's as powerful as The Three believe she is, then she could easily establish her reign over our realm, provided that we weren't in it to stop her."

So when we get back home, we're gonna find it turned almost completely upside down, right?" Joey said in exasperation.

As though in response, a tiny orb of white light appeared in their midst and once more grew into a portal surrounded by a glimmering aura. The image within showed them the sight of a rather gloomy castle, although perhaps the word 'prison' would have been more appropriate to describe it. The place was made entirely of thick grey stone, with a multitude of black-capped towers reinforcing it. The few windows carved into the walls were all protected by heavy iron bars, ensuring that no one could get in or out through them. What appeared to be actual grey-stoned gargoyles, complete with sneering bat-like faces and violet-glowing eyes, were soaring in the air above the place, roaring angrily at anything and everything that neared it, and a moat around the perimeter, though it first appeared peaceful, had the snapping jaws of sharp-toothed crocodiles bursting up and down on occasion from the liquid's surface with crashes of raging waves.

Only Spencer, Yuri, and Mokuba appeared awestruck by the sight of the glistening palace. The others wore looks of exasperation and disgust on their faces, for surrounding the castle was a very familiar white-stoned wall with cast-iron gates built in for an opening. They did, after all, have to walk through the gates nearly every day in order to enter the grounds of what used to be their school.

"Dat's Domino High, isn't it?" Joey said rather flatly.

"Yep," Tristan replied.

"So de queen or witch or whatever de heck she is decided ta use it as her home base?"

"Uh-huh."

Silence. Then, Joey finally said, "I gotta give her credit for dis: She's finally made school look as depressin' as it really is."

"Even so, we must force her to transform it back into the way it was before," Pharaoh said. "Come now, everyone; let's return home and force this queen to leave it for all eternity…"


End file.
